COLCHICUM BALANSAE

Family:- COLCHICACEAE

Common Name:- None

Synonyms:- Colchicum candidum.

Meaning:- Colchicum (Gr) After Colchis, a Black sea port. A Name used by the

Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides.

Balansae (L) For Benjamin Balansa (1825-92) French plant collector.

General description:- Bulbous plants with pink or white flowers, with or without

darker-coloured dots on the perianth segments.

Corm:-

1) 4-5 x 2-3 cm. ovoid.

2) Outer tunics blackish-brown produced into a very long, persistent, fibrous neck

up to 25 cm.

Leaves:-

1) Large (up to 24 x 7 cm). Developing after the flowers. erecto-patent.

3) Inner, ligulate.

Flowers:-

1) usually 4-6 Infundibuliform. glabrous in the throat.

2) Perianth segments, 4.5-7 cm. narrowly oblong-elliptical.white to purplish-pink.

3) Anthers, 10-17 x c. 1 mm. yellow.

4) Styles, curved at the apex.

5) Stigma, decurrent for 1.5-3 mm.

Fruit:-

1) Capsule c. 3 mm.

Key features:-

1) Anthers 10-17 mm.

2) Leaves 4-5, elliptic to linear-oblong, usually 4-6 cm wide.

Habitat:- Rocky hlllslopes with dry open shrubby vegetation and open pinewoods,

300-1000 m.

Distribution:- Described from the Cilician Taurus and restricted to SW & S Anatolia

and the East Aegean Islands. Previously unrecored from Crete. Discovered by

Marinos Gogolos, Manolis Afrathianakis and Antonis Alibertis Sept 2022.

Flowering time:- Aug to early Oct

Photos by:- Marinos Gogolos