I did a double-take when I saw these in the neighborhood! They look like gigantic crocuses to me, and it’s entirely the wrong time of year for those.
I have since come to find out that there are autumn crocuses, too, but I remain skeptical. Perhaps you’ll be able to pin down the answer: are these crocuses, or a similar-appearing flower?
They seem somewhat popular: at least two houses in the neighborhood have got ’em. And I can see why: they’re gorgeous! Pipa and I took a slow walk round to look at them, and she was gracious enough to be patient while I got contorted into all sorts of angles taking photos for ye.
When you get up super-close, you see a sort of criss-cross pattern of darker purple lines in their petals. Really pretty!
I took about a trillion shots from different angles. Okay, 25. It was 25. I really love how they look against the board fence.
I may turn some of these into prints: if you’d like, go check out the whole collection, and tell me which ones you think are the bestest ever. There’s bonus Pipa with poppies there, too! She was ever so helpful.
Have a last lovely look, and if you know what our beauties are, I’m dying to know!
Superb photos there. No idea what species or even genus or family they might be. Marvellously beautiful in any case though.
Suspect parasitic plants* though – lack of chlorophyll green and stems with no leaves apparent suggests that, Of course quite a number of plants (many orchids among others I gather) go through stages with flowers and leaves that aren’t simultaneous. have you noted leaves there before connected with these ones?
* Famously the largest flowering plant of all :
http://www.rafflesiaflower.com/
Which is now endangered, perhaps unsurprising but something I didn’t really know till reading that.
Beautiful fall crocuses!
They look
Uh, what did my keyboard just do?
And again:
The look like Herstzeitlosen to me. According to Wikipedia the are actually called Autumn Crocus in English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchicum_autumnale
Around here (Germany) they grow wild. There are some meadows close to my home here with hundreds of them blooming right now. Quite a beautiful sight. I had no idea they were planted in gardens in the US.
They have one downside though, they are quite poisonous and the leaves in spring look a bit like Bear’s Garlic so that this beautiful plant has been responsible for a number of deaths!
I don’t remember the correct name but they are commonly called fall crocuses. Did you notice the absence of leaves? They have a rather peculiar growth cycle: In the spring they grow leaves, which feed the bulb and then wither and go away. Then suddenly in the fall, they flower, with no new leaves.
That’s autumn crocus, aka meadow saffron, yet another exhibit in the “here is why we use Linnaean binomials” display: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchicum_autumnale. There were some of those planted in a garden near where I used to live, and I found them startling for the first two or three years.
I agree, they’re Colchicum autumnale, more commonly called autumn crocus (which is what the Latin translates to).
It reminds me of rain lilies (Cooperia pedunculata), which are a type of crocus that grows wild around here in South Texas. Their leaves are very small and low-lying, so they hide in lawns really well. You won’t even know you have them until it rains. Blooms pop up a day or two after a rain, which doesn’t happen all that often during late spring through early fall around here. They are much smaller than those, though.
http://www.wildflower.org/image_archive/640×480/JAM6151/6151_IMG00352.JPG