Crocuses

£2.40

A gentle Sympathy card featuring crocuses and text ‘With Deepest Sympathy’

– Blank inside for your own message
– Printed in the UK on premium card stock
– Supplied with a white envelope

In stock

SKU: C0046 Category:

Description

Crocuses

Crocuses is a sympathy card featuring mauve petals with yellow stamens viewed from above. Overlaid above the flowers there is text within a box that reads ‘With Deepest Sympathy’.

Surprisingly, crocuses are in the iris family and there are a hugely diverse group with over ninety different species. Like irises, they share the growth habit of being perennials that grow from corms. Corms are fat, round, underground tubers that feed plants so they can survive winter. As you might have observed, crocuses (like irises) like damp conditions, so corms also help in times of drought.

Saffron

Of course, the most famous crocus is the one from which saffron is gathered. It may be because of the wonderful colouring properties of saffron that the word crocus has such a long history. To be precise, the word can be traced back to the Hebrew word karkom, and the Aramaic and Sanskrit curcuma,

Not surprisingly, it was the opening up of trade with the East that brought crocuses to Europe in the 1500s where different varieties were cross-bred, giving us mauve, purple, yellow, and white varieties.

Autumn Crocuses

One plant that might be mistaken for a crocus is the autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale). However, that plant is not a crocus but a member of the plant family Colchicaceae. That is of course unlike the true crocuses which belong to the Iris family. A reason not to confuse the two is that the autumn crocus is poisonous!

SKU: C0046

A gentle Sympathy card featuring crocuses and text 'With Deepest Sympathy'
Crocuses
£2.40