Fragrance in Colchicum
Jane McGary (Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:42:53 PDT)

This afternoon I was looking at the colchicums in the bulb frame and
noticed a sweet fragrance. It proved to emanate from a large-flowered one
that I received originally under the name "Colchicum atropurpureum 'Drake's
Form'." "C. atropurpureum" is a name that appears in Stearn's old
monograph, but E. A. Bowles's discussion of it is both confused and
confusing; he seems to mean that the name has been variously applied, and
concludes that "there is no species to which it can be ascribed," although
saying that it is close to C. turcicum -- an opinion repeated in
Christopher Brickell's entry for it in the AGS Encyclopaedia of Alpines. I
don't know which Drake found this form; perhaps it was the English
nurseryman Jack Drake. Very likely it should just be called Colchicum
'Drake's Form'.

Anyway, after noticing this naturally I went around sniffing colchicum
flowers, and found no other with this particular honey scent. A few were
slightly malodorous, and most had a faint, mildly pleasing scent that
reminds me of a good-quality non-perfumed milled white face soap. C.
speciosum hasn't opened here yet, but it is the parent of many garden
hybrids, so I'll await its fragrance to see if that is where 'Drake's Form'
got it.

Incidentally, while looking up "atropurpureum," I discovered that the name
C. laetum has been applied to two different entities. The true species is
small-flowered, and the large-flowered plant with many narrow-tepaled
flowers, which is what I have here and have distributed, is something else
-- one author says it is allied with C. byzantinum. So if you have C.
laetum from me, it is C. laetum hort. (the abbreviation used to designate
"taxonomic" names that are used in horticulture but not recognized in the
botanical literature), and we must both continue trying to get the true
species, while blaming the English and the Dutch, who have cast us into
this confusion, though in the process providing us with some very beautiful
garden flowers.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA