Consider The Crocus

Here we are trying to recover from a hot and droughty summer that’s sapped the energy and enthusiasm of even the most dedicated gardeners—but if you want a cheery early spring garden with color it’s time to start thinking about planting again.The spring flower bulb catalogs arrived months ago and now the last-minute specials are cluttering my email, and the garden centers with all their bins of Dutch bulbs are tempting and teasing us. But what’s the point when the deer simply suck up the newly planted tulip bulbs and the squirrels seem to inhale the freshly planted crocuses?

But think winter. Think ice and frozen ground and weeks and weeks of bleakness when the closest you can get to gardening is the fading poinsettia and twice-bloomed amaryllis. Remember the desperation when all you wanted to see was that very first crocus, the gardener’s sign of hope. Colorful, low-growing crocuses cheer the soul after a barren winter. Crocuses are also feisty flowers, endowed by nature with a redundant system of replication that makes them natural survivors and easy multipliers. Once established, beds of crocus can “come back” to bloom each spring for decades. It all sounds excellent, unless you have … squirrels.

Those bushy-tailed rodents that some find cute, but gardeners find contrary, just love to munch on crocus bulbs. The most common crocuses, various hybrids of Crocus vernus, are especially toothsome to the genus Sciurus (squirrel). Gardeners employ various strategies to discourage crocus-foraging varmints, from hot pepper sauce to the most putrid bulb dips. These dips often work for the first year, but there is only one strategy that is foolproof. Plant crocuses that squirrels don’t like.

Yes, such varieties do exist. Not only do they exist, but they’re really cool, though you may have to do some leg- or keyboard work to find them. The purple or white species and hybrids of Crocus tommasinianus bloom from late winter to early spring. They look great, and when gardeners see them for the first time they love them. On the other hand, they taste lousy, so squirrels hate them. To crocus lovers, this makes Tommies (as the British call them) much beloved.

The species is an Eastern European native named in honor of 19th-century botanist Muzio Giuseppe Spirito de Tommasini. It is one of the earliest crocuses, blooming in late winter and early spring along with the other bulbous early birds such as galanthus (snowdrops), eranthis (winter aconite), chionodoxa (glory of the snow) and Iris reticulata (dwarf iris). Crocus tommasinianus stands barely 6 inches tall, with slim, egg-shaped flowers in white, pale lilac, silvery purple or reddish purple. Tommies thrive in full sun or partial shade and are excellent naturalizers in hardiness zones 3 to 8. For gardeners, what separates this species from others is mainly its unfavorable flavor to critters. Otherwise, it has the advantages found in other crocuses.

Most plants grow and flower during the summer, die back in the fall and are dormant during the winter. Hardy flower bulbs—including crocuses, tulips, daffodils and other spring-bloomers—have a different life cycle. After flowering in early spring, crocuses send out grass-like leaves. These leaves serve as mini-solar panels to gather energy to power next year’s bloom season. More precisely, bulb flower leaves gather the energy of the sun and, through photosynthesis, turn the minerals and nutrients of the soil into sugars and starches the plant stores in its “bulb” and uses as nourishment.

In fall, when other plants are going dormant, bulbs such as crocuses are revving up. After a summer of dormancy, the crocus is developing “daughter” bulbs on top of the original “mother” bulb (technically a corm), now nearly spent and about to shrivel and fade away, to be replaced by the daughter corms. As the mother corm fades, the daughters strengthen and prepare to carry the family line forward into the next season. It might be supposed that by forming on top of the mother corm, the daughter corms would eventually work their way to the surface. Not so—nature adapts.

In addition to the normal, straight downward-growing roots, the daughter corms have what are called contractile roots. These roots go down at an angle, acting as an anchor to pull the daughter corm down so that it takes the position of the spent mother corm. The new daughters are now clustered around the position of the original mother corm, ready to bloom anew in a thicker, richer display of color than the year before.

The mother-daughter propagation model is a neat trick. But crocuses do more. Crocuses that are naturalized, whose foliage is not mowed or cut down too early, also propagate through self-seeding. Gardeners are often surprised to find crocuses showing up in the landscape where they were never planted. This is due either to their seed progeny or to a rodent that dug the bulb elsewhere and stashed it in a new location for later consumption.

When planting the various versions of Crocus vernus and other pest-vulnerable crocus varieties, some simple strategies can help mitigate losses. Clean up loose bulb tunics (the papery bulb covering) and other planting debris. Their scent is a tip-off to where planted bulbs lie. Many gardeners advise feeding squirrels peanuts or corn in tree feeders during squirrels’ fall nut gathering and humans’ bulb-planting period. This is the tactic once employed by the National Park Service at the White House. In theory, this offers the squirrels easy food in prime season, discouraging them from digging for harder to find nourishment, such as buried bulbs.

Squirrels are not the only creatures to find crocuses a tasty treat. At least one crocus species has long been a hit by human gastronomes and others. Crocus sativus, perhaps better known as saffron, first made its mark as a spice, an aromatic oil, coloring pigment and flavoring agent several thousand years ago.

Ancient peoples valued the fall-blooming Asian flower for the pollen produced by its three dark-red pistils. The substance proved to be aromatic, flavorful and, in the time before our modern chemical wizardry, a good dye for fabrics.

Today the commercial value of Crocus sativus is chiefly as a source of the spice saffron, with Spain a center of production. Crocus sativus came to Spain around 711 A.D. with the Moorish invasion and found a hospitable home. The plant thrives at elevations of around 1,500 feet, in soil rich in lime and quartz. Other saffron centers include Iran, Greece, Morocco and India.

For those wishing to cultivate their own saffron patch, the flowers, as decorative items, are very easy to grow. Commercial production, however, is a very precise and painstaking art. It takes 75,000 blossoms to produce just one pound of commercial-grade saffron. So, you’ve got your work cut out. Keep growing.