Crocus

|-- | |-- |[[image:CrocusLongiflorus.jpg|thumb|200px|flowering plants that grows from a corm, growing naturally from the Aegean (where crocuses appear in Minoan frescos at Santorini), across Central Asia. Crocuses are placed botanically in the family Iridaceae.

As one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring, the large hybridized and selected "Dutch crocus" (illustration, right) are popular with gardeners. The flowers are purple, white, yellow, or combinations of these colors. There are also at least a hundred species of crocus, of which approximately 30 are cultivated.

The spice saffron is obtained from the stamens of Crocus sativus, a fall-blooming species. The first crocus seen in the Netherlands, where Crocus species is not native, were corms brought back from the Holy Roman Emperor's ambassador to the Sublime Porte, A. Ghislain de Busbeq, in the 1560s. A few corms were forwarded to Carolus Clusius at the botanical garden in Leiden. By 1620, the approximate date of Ambrosius Bosschaert's painting (illustration, left), new garden varieties had been developed, such as the cream-colored crocus feathered with bronze at the base of the bouquet, similar to varieties still in the market. Bosschaert, working from a preparatory drawing to paint his composed piece, which spans the whole of Spring, exaggerated the crocus so that it passes for a tulip, but its narrow, grasslike leaves give it away.

Though some true crocus bloom with the fall rains, after summer's heat and drought, Autumn Crocus is a common name used for Colchicum, which is in the lily family (Liliaceae).