Description
This makes small bulbs, without offsets and just one or two, quite narrow but ovate leaves. These are blue-green and are both channelled and crimped, so they look as if they are made of blue-green seersucker.
The flowers are borne in a tight, round head up to 10cm across on a scape that is usually dwarf though it can reach 20-30cm tall. Each flower is in excess of 1cm across in the shape of an open bell. There are starry forms as well as dull coloured forms, ours has quite wide petals which almost overlap and the flowers are white, with just a pale pink-brown central stripe. Everyone’s geese are swans, but there are some muddy, starry and frankly ugly forms about but ours is the best colour form that we have seen! It is the form in the picture.
Flowering is in June and this is happiest in a sharply drained, loam-based compost, dry in summer. We keep it under alpine glass for safety. Cold hardiness is probably not a problem, but excess winter wet or lack of summer dryness could be.
Originally found growing in cliffs in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan and growing only in Afghanistan at up to 3,000m. Our seed came from the area of Bamian. This was probably introduced by Paul Furse and it was subsequently named by Per Wendelbo.
