Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to bring you up to date on all the things that have been happening here, which really don’t amount to much at all. You may remember me from such posts as “Another New Toy”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can tell by the kneeling bench and “kangaroo bag” behind me that some fairly serious gardening was going on today. The guy I live with gets tired pretty quickly, but still, he managed to get a bunch of stuff done.
It’s been so ridiculously hot for this time of year that we haven’t had much of anything to post about for quite a while.
The hummingbirds are all gone now. I kind of miss them. The guy I live with says it’s a sign that autumn is really here.
The guy I live with has been watering a lot, since it’s been so dry here after the last rain we had, and one day we got into a fight over the sprinkler. I may have won, but I got pretty wet.
Despite the fact that it’s been so hot, we’re starting to see some leaves turn color.
That green thing is the stand for the birdbath that broke; he keeps saying he’s going to get rid of that, like he keeps saying about a lot of things.
He took a couple of pictures of the garden in the bright sunlight.
The big deal here (for him but not for me) are the crocuses. This was a really poor year for autumn-flowering bulbs, especially the colchicums, of which there are a lot, but the crocuses are doing okay. There are some snowdrops in flower, too, but the crocuses are the main thing right now, for the guy I live with.
This is a pretty esoteric corner of gardening, so you’ll have to bear with me. I mean really bear with me.
The first thing to mention is that the most beautiful of the autumn-flowering crocuses, Crocus speciosus, doesn’t need this treatment if you plant them and water them right away (or if it, you know, rains).
“Speciosus” means “beautiful”, and has the root word “species“, meaning sort or kind. “Species” is a singular noun. (“Specie”, as the guy I live with has said before on this blog, refers to coins.)
The guy I live with has been ranting and raving lately (I just ignore him) about how English-speaking people pronounce this word.
It is pronounced spee-seez, not shpee-seez. This really drives the guy I live with crazy.
Anyway, the second thing is, the method of rooting these special (pronounced “spe-shul”, no H in that word either) crocuses has paid off.
Recently some of the wild populations of Crocus speciosus have been segregated into species in their own right, based on the anthers, styles, and so on, and the guy I live with just had to have some of them.
I did tell you this was something esoteric, didn’t I?
Here are a few of them.
This is Crocus armeniensis:
This is Crocus puringii:
Crocus brachyfilus:
Crocus zubovii:
You may wonder about the pots. These are small pond baskets, plunged into the ground, to help protect the corms against voles and mice, and also so if the corms increase they can be shared with the botanic gardens here.
Someone from the botanic gardens came over this week and the guy I live with, who likes sharing, gave them some unusual snowdrops, Galanthus angustifolius and Galanthus samothracicus. He says rare stuff should be shared.
Back to crocuses. Crocus niveus is flowering too. This is from the Mani Peninsula in Greece, which of course was named after me.
A couple of days later all of them were in flower, and they got a temporary cage over them.
This is a grasshopper cage and will be replaced with a regular cage made from hardware cloth, to protect the overwintering leaves from rabbits, who love to eat the leaves down to the ground, which is a bad thing.
Crocus speciosus does not have overwintering leaves, but crocuses like the one above, and saffron crocuses like C. sativus do.
This one, Crocus pulchellus ‘Inspiration’, also does not have overwintering leaves. The leaves appear in spring, like they do with C. speciosus.
I think that’s it for today. I won’t talk much about the perfumed trash bags that the guy I live with accidentally bought and which are stinking up the patio, or the other odd things the guy I live with has been up to, since I forced all this crocus talk on you.
Just try to imagine what it’s like living with a nut like this.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Nut? Well, that sounds like fun when you put it that way.
It can be, sometimes.
“It is pronounced spee-seez, not shpee-seez.”
Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes! Decades ago I worked in the collections department of a large regional natural history museum, which shall remain nameless, but which is located in Denver, where a major figure working in the *zoology department* shpee-seezed several times a day. The scar is permanent.
The guy you live with’s crocus talk is way over my head but I still appreciate the education (and some of it might even be sinking in). I freely admit to you, Mani, that I am wondering more about the sprinkler fight.
Well, I wanted to attack the sprinkler, which I hadn’t done in a long time and felt it was necessary. The guy I live with was against that, but I did get soaking wet, so it was worth it.
The shpee-seez thing is annoying to the guy I live with, because there’s no reason for the H, unless you’re Mooch in “Mutts”.
Like when people pronounce “parmesan” as “par-me-ZHAN”.
“It is pronounced spee-seez, not shpee-seez. This really drives the guy I live with crazy.” After yet another discussion of how to pronounce things botanical at the Berkshire Chapter of NARGS, I recall Geoffrey Charlesworth opining that correct pronounciation was not important a long as communication occured. Geoffrey was a fascinating fellow, extraordinary gardener, author (The Opinionated Gardener and others), and former code-breaker at Bletchley Park in the UK during WW2 where he met his partner, Norman Singer (former President of NARGS). I’ll point you to one of his amusing poems here: https://awaytogarden.com/a-favorite-poem-to-mark-passings-in-the-garden/
The guy I live with met both Geoffrey and Norman, a long time ago.
But “species” is a word in English, and there’s no evidence that ancient Romans pronounced S as SH.
Mani,
I think you should have some more stuff named after you, stuff like a new crocus or something like that. I mean, a peninsula is fine and all, but that one is a far piece off.
P.S. It’s still hot here in Texas, too. It’s supposed to be 99° F tomorrow. Yikes!
All the best to you and the guy you live with!
Thanks; it’s not so hot here now, finally.
I think something named after me would be excellent. But people might confuse it with the peninsula, even though that’s Greek, and my name is Sanskrit.
Mew mew mew Mani nose nose!! Not THE scented garbage bagss??? Mee made BellaSita give tHE oness she bott away! Then shee brott home THE wrong kitty litter…this stuff iss two stinky an dusty an mee put mee paw down an reefused to use litturbox….shee gotted THE rite littur 😉 Hu’manss need monnytorin fore sure…..
Guy yore Crocusess allwayss impress us so much!! All yore garden effortss impress us! Yore a Gardenin Geeneuss!
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. Well the guy I live with constantly claims he’s a genius, but I remain very doubtful.
The smell of the trash bags (they’re “contractor” bags, heavy duty) is just awful.
The guy I live with has no idea why everything has to have a “fragrance” these days. It’s disgusting.
BellaSita AGREESS with you Guy 150% purr cent. All this stinky stuff iss reediculuss shee tellss mee. An THE stuff they put inn mee litter iss UCKY! Glade sumthin an it iss not guud fore eether of us.
Mani yore Guy makess thingss grow that wee figured wuud not grow there….mew mew mew…..
The guy I live with says the crocuses generally need a hot, dry summer which we can provide without getting out of bed in the morning. The only issue is the lack of rain in autumn, which didn’t used to be the case here.
I don’t know what it is with humans and all this “fragrance”. It stinks to me, too, and I have a very sensitive nose.The guy I live with assures me that things weren’t always like this.
He got a book in the mail that smelled so bad he had to put it in a palstic bag with coffee grounds for a couple of weeks before he could even open it without getting sick.
But all of that is nothing compared to the house next door, which you can smell all over our part of the neighborhood.
Mee-yow wee nevurr herd of THE Coffee trick! Wee keep this inn mind Mani an Guy! An wee nose from past postss; THE house next door is a STINK FACTORY!! EEEWWW!
Iss innterestin how youss grow Crocusess this time of yeer an ourss do not bloom til April way up heer 😉
The guy I live with says fresh coffee grounds do an excellent job of deodorizing some things.
These are autumn-flowering crocuses. Probably the majority of crocuses flower in spring (or mid to late winter here).
Just like there are autumn-flowering cyclamen, snowdrops, and narcissus. (The autumn-flowering narcissus aren’t hard here, though.)
Guud Greef wee furgot about Autumm bloomin flowerss Mani an Guy. Furgive us!! Wee will have to reememburr yore coffee tip!
That’s okay.
Just remember to use fresh coffee grounds.
OKay wee will reememburr Mani an Guy!
We keep wondering where the moisture is…it’s been 6 weeks since it rained in NW Denver. The trees are not happy about that! Take good care Mani.
We had three-quarters of an inch of rain three weeks ago, but things are pretty dry now. The guy I live with said it probably wouldn;t be so dry if it hadn’t been so hot. (He used a word between “so” and “hot” which I can’t repeat.)
If people need scented garbage bags to cover up the smell of their garbage, they are doing something wrong. I had to buy some at a store once because they were all that’s left. They got shoved in a back drawer at work and slowly used up over time. That scent lasted for years. Glad they are finally gone.
Nice that you have a peninsula named after you. I think the only things named after me are jerry-rigged and geri-atric (the latter one is a stretch). The crocus collection is impressive. Are the fall-blooming species more closely related to each other, or from the same region of the world, compared to other species?
Our scented trash bags are outside. The guy I live with says the smell is revolting. Not as strong as the smell from next door (you got a whiff of that, if you remember), but gross.
The guy I live with once got a pair of jeans in the mail (not from the Levi’s store) and they stank so badly he washed them right away, and then the washing machine stank. Took three or four loads of just water and some scentless detergent to get rid of the smell.
The washed jeans hung outside, and you could smell them for miles around. They were thrown away.
He doesn’t know why everything has to be drenched in “fragrance”.
There are “jerrycans”, too.
The guy I live with says there are some crocuses native to southern Europe (France, Italy) but most are from the Balkans and especially Turkey, which has the most. There are a lot in the middle east, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq. A bunch in Iran, and one way out east in the various “stans” all the way to Xinjiang in China, at high elevations–that’s Crocus alatavicus, which does very well here and flowers in spring.
The autumn-flowering ones are native to Spain, Morocco, Italy, the Balkans, with lots in Greece even more in Turkey, and some in Iran and the middle east.
I do remember your neighbors. There are just some smells that can’t be unsmelt. Though, as I write that, I am suddenly recalling the smell of smelt from a Wisconsin Friday night fish fry. Jerry-cans was a new noun for me. Thanks for adding to my vocabulary! That’s a big geographic range for crocus. Hmm, we have a friend who loves to visit Spain regularly. Maybe we can go with him some autumn and see the crocus up close.
The guy I live with says that’s probably why they call them smelt. He’s so humorous.
The autumn-flowering crocus in Spain is Crocus serotinus and its subspecies salzmanii, also found in Morocco. The guy I live with tried this once but it never came back, almost certainly because he didn’t make the effort to make sure the corms he got were rooted before he planted them. Live and learn, I guess.
“Serotinus” means “late”, by the way. There is also Narcissus serotinus, from Spain, and the green-flowered N. viridiflorus, also from Spain, which flower in autumn.
Ah, Narcissus viridflorus, that is a beauty. Many years ago, I learned “serotinous” as a term to refer to the delayed release of seeds from pine cones after a fire, as in jack pine (Pinus banksiana). I also immediately thought of Prunus serotina, which can have delayed seed germination. I must sneak this word into everyday conversation some how.
The guy I live with says probably not to say “How very serotinous of you” to a person late to dinner, since that isn’t how the word is used even though it may seem like it’s possible, and “serotine” refers to some bats, and pine cones (he looked all that up), so it’ll be interesting to see how you do that.
I think in the case of the crocus it refers to the fact that it flowers late in the year, though if you think about it, autumn-flowering corms and bulbs really flower at the beginning of the flowering period, since there are ones that flower in winter, and then in spring (or late winter, here).