Description
Tecophilaea cyanocrocus is unique in the bulb world for the sheer depth and intensity of its fabulous deep gentian blue flowers. The strength of colour is almost unbelievable, but there is an added bonus of a lovely, gentle scent of violets, when the air is warm and still. It really should be in every serious bulb enthusiast’s collection.
This was thought to be extinct in its original wild locations. Victorian collectors were blamed (with no evidence) however the subsequent discovery at Kew of a lack of genetic variation in cultivated stocks suggests that in fact it was never collected in large numbers bur rather it was propagated from a limited number of plants, which accounts for the lack of genetic diversity. The less headline-grabbing cause of scarcity or disappearance seems to have actually been sheep farming combined with water abstraction for farming and climatic change. This and the fact that it was never known from many places anyway. In fact this is now known to grow, in considerable numbers, in several newly discovered locations and it is far from “extinct in the wild” as had been thought.
The existing cultivated stocks are readily grown in a well-drained, gritty compost under cold glass but they will grow outside in a very favoured spot (in coastal southerly UK, coastal Ireland and parts of New Zealand certainly). With suitable management (a dry, but not over-dry, summer rest) they are now also grown outside as a field crop in large quantities in Holland and increasingly it seems that the plant is capable of being grown outside in more areas than was once thought possible.
