Colchicum 'Nancy Lindsay'

This has turned out to be a good doer here, and over the years it has increased slowly but steadily. Here you see it in the late afternoon sun, its color much enhanced by that circumstance. All of the pink flowered colchicums look best at this time of day. In the full sun of mid-day their colors can seem washy.

Have I got the name right? With colchicums that often seems a fair question. But this cultivar has a distinguishing mark: the flush of color on the “stem” of the flower. “Stem” is in quotes because this flower does not have a stem: everything above ground is part of the flower itself, not a stem.

This colchicum is one of two plants I grow with connections to Nancy Lindsay. The other is the found rose now called ‘Rose de Rescht’ which Lindsay is said to have found in the Iranian Caspian Sea coastal town of Rascht (the name has come into the Roman alphabet in several forms). See here for an interesting history of this rose:

http://scvrs.homestead.com/RoseDeRescht.html

And see here for a brief sketch of Nancy Lindsay’s life:

http://www.norahlindsay.com/NLNancyLindsay.html