We list an outstanding range of seeds from this summer-dormant genus in Iridaceae comprising almost 100 species, flowering from autumn to spring and distributed from western Europe and North Africa to Central Asia. Their centre of diversity is in Turkey. While our listing is the most comprehensive in the world, we stress that crocuses are the most difficult in cultivation among the main genera of bulbs and corms which we offer. As a few are familiar garden plants in temperate areas, many gardeners assume all are easy. Those listed cheaply as wild species in less specialized bulb catalogues are sometimes of hybrid origin or are clones, often untypical of the species as a whole and selected for mass production. If you want good reliable garden-plants, these are for you. For the specialist grower, we are attempting to build up basic fertile parent-stocks, raised from wild seed-collections where possible, as a source of hand-pollinated seeds. This is less easy with Crocus than with many other genera, as there are few seeds in a capsule and maintaining quite a large number of corms is necessary. Collecting seeds is also quite critical and can be troublesome, even in cultivation and almost always so in the wild. We usually have one or two wild seed-collections listed but most seed is cultivated by us. Seeds of many will always be expensive and in short supply. In our efforts to list an exceptional range of Crocus species, we have been much assisted by several other growers throughout Europe, particularly David Stephens, who takes the British National Crocus Collection in his care seriously.

Nomenclature : Names follow the standard reference for the genus 'The Crocus' by Brian Mathew (1982). Brian also wrote the accounts of this genus in ‘The European Garden Flora’, ‘Flora Europaea’, ‘Flora Iranica’ and ‘Flora of Turkey'. These accounts do not include quite a number of species which have been described more recently by Erich Pasche and his associates in a variety of horticultural and botanical publications. A new book for gardeners would be welcome and it is to be hoped that David Stephens might produce one for us.

Further information : 'The Crocus' by Brian Mathew (1982). ‘The Bulb Book’ by Martyn Rix and Roger Phillips. ‘The Smaller Bulbs’ by Brian Mathew (1987). ‘Growing Bulbs’ by Martyn Rix (1983). The old classic work was 'A Handbook of Crocus and Colchicum for Gardeners' by E.A. Bowles, first published in 1924 and revised in 1952. The names in this have been much altered by Brian Mathew's work but Bowles' account is not only of value historically but because it records the practical experiences of a great gardener.