Newsletter 126
Autumn Crocus - What's In A Name?
The common, or English, name for a plant is often interesting, perhaps of historical significance or redolent of some past use for the plant. Unfortunately it is also very often misleading when it comes to the relationship of plants. Taxonomy is a confusing branch of Botany, not helped by the frequent use of common names or by squabbles between taxonomists who seem to delight in changing scientific names or even the family to which the specimen belongs. The value of a single scientific (Latin) name can be seen in the well-known plant Caltha palustris whose English names include Kingcup, Marsh Marigold and May Blobs. It is distributed around the northern hemisphere as far south as northern India and has gathered many common names – e.g. more than 140 in Germany and at least 60 in France. So many common names would bring chaos were it not for the use of a single scientific (Latin) name.
“Crocus” is a good example of confusion and taxonomic complexity. The scientific or Latin name of the genus is derived from the Greek κρόκος, krokos that in turn is derived from a Chaldean word meaning “thread” from the styles which in some species produce saffron. In the Semitic language group it is, in Hebrew karkom, Aramaic kurkama, whilst in both Persian and Arabic it is kurkum, all with the same meaning saffron or saffron yellow. In Greek, the word is also used for the similarly coloured egg yolk
The name “Crocus” is applied to a variety of plants such as the “Sand Crocus” - Romulea columnae (Iridaceae), a rare native of sandy turf close to the sea at Dawlish Warren in South Devon and the Channel Islands and possibly Cornwall. The generic name is derived from Romulus, one of the mythical founders of Rome, the type species of the genus being common around that city.
This name “Crocus” is also applied to the “Autumn Crocus”, otherwise known as “Meadow Saffron” or “Naked Ladies” because the flowers appear in the autumn without any leaves. The term Autumn Crocus came in to use in Victorian times when the name Naked Ladies was not considered polite. The scientific name is Colchicum autumnale (Liliaceae), a native plant widespread, but relatively scarce, in damp meadows and woodlands on basic or neutral soils with a distribution formerly found from Devon as far north as Cumbria and Yorkshire and across the Irish sea in Kilkenny. The plants occasionally found in Scotland are almost certainly naturalised garden escapes. The generic name Colchicum is derived from the Latin, a kind of plant with a poisonous root, from Greek kolchikon, literally, a product of Colchis, a Black Sea port noted in antiquity as a source of the poison colchicine extracted from the corm of the plant. Nowadays colchicine is used occasionally to alleviate gout but remains important in plant cytology as a drug to induce chromosome doubling.
The true Crocus found wild in Britain is an introduced species. The Autumn Crocus (again) – Crocus nudiflorus (Iridaceae) – previously known under the names C. multifidus, C. aphyllus, C. fimbriatus and C. pryenaeus - is naturalised in several sites around Chorley and elsewhere in around 30 sites in England as far north as Cumbria and Yorkshire in permanent meadows and roadsides. There is a belief that it is found around houses once upon a time belonging to the Knights Templar and was grown as a substitute for the Saffron Crocus. However, I am not aware of connections with the Knights Templars at the sites where it is found around Chorley. I suspect that many medieval households in the north of England grew it as a dye and spice plant and it has only survived where the grassland has remained undisturbed. Many sites were probably lost because of wartime “plough up” campaigns to increase food production.
Another introduced species is the Purple Crocus – Crocus vernus (Iridaceae) – previously known under the names C. purpureus, C. napolitanus, C. banaticus, C. heuffelianus and C. scepusiensis - naturalised in short turf in a few sites usually in hilly country in central and southern England. The Saffron Crocus – Crocus sativus (Iridaceae), which gave its name to the town of Saffron Walden, has been cultivated from early medieval times as a source of a dye and the spice saffron, but has never been naturalised in the wild in the United Kingdom. It has sterile flowers and has to be multiplied vegetatively by means of its corms.
Several other species of Crocus, widely available in horticulture, go under the name of “Autumn Crocus” and are frequently to be seen in gardens in flower in the autumn, and indeed throughout the winter. These include species such as C. kotschyanus, C. speciosus and C. banaticus (September to October flowering), C. pulchellus and C. hadriaticus (September to November flowering), and C. sativus (October to December flowering). I have grown all these in my garden in Adlington and find they persist for up to four or five years before eventually succumbing to our cold, wet winters. I have never known of any of these species naturalizing in Britain and doubt they could withstand either our damp weather or the competition from other plants.
The various “Crocus” genera were, at one time, all placed in one order – the Liliales but distributed amongst two families the Iridaceae and the Liliaceae.
The classic taxonomic position I have used for most of my life is as follows –
| Class | Angiospermae | Flowering Plants |
| Subclass | Monocotyledoneae | Monocotyledonous Plants |
| Superorder | Lilliidae | A very large group ranging from Water Hyacinths to Orchids. |
| Order | Liliales | |
| Family | At least 14 families including the three closely related families – | |
| Iridaceae | The Iris family Some 60 genera with around 800 species including – Crocus, Romulea (Sand Crocus), Sisyrinchium (Blue-eyed Grass), Ixia, Tritonia, Gladiolus and Iris etc. | |
| Liliaceae | The Lily family - Some 250 genera with around 3,700 species including Colchicum, Asphodelus, Narthecium (Bog Asphodel), Convallaria (Lily of the Valley), Polygonatum (Solomon’s Seal), Agapanthus, Allium, Lilium, Tulipa, Fritillaria, Scilla Squill), Ornithogalum (Star of Bethlehem), Hyacinthus, Muscari, Asparagus and Smilax etc. | |
| Amaryllidaceae | The Daffodil family - Some 85 genera with around 1100 species including Galanthus (Snowdrop), Leucojum (Snowflake), Amaryllis, Crinum, Ixiolirion, Pancratium, Hippeastrum and Narcissus (Daffodil) etc |
Now things have changed. There is much more effort being placed in trying to reflect the evolutionary history of a plant group in its taxonomy rather than, as in the past, merely conveniently “pigeon-holing” groups with apparently similar floral structures as was Linnaeus’s original plan in his Species Plantarum of 1753 when he gave each plant a binomial name incorporating the genus and the species to which the specimen belonged. Earlier, in 1735, he had published Systema Naturae in which he first grouped species into genera, these into orders, and orders into classes
The present day taxonomic position is the result of a great deal of work including the analysis of DNA profiling data which has led to substantial alterations in taxonomic thinking about the relationships of orders, genera and families in recent years. Even the use of group names such as monocotyledons and dicotyledons is now being challenged. Eudicots and Eudicotyledons are terms introduced by Doyle & Hotton, in 1991, to refer to a group of flowering plants that had been called "tricolpates" or "non-Magnoliid dicots" by previous authors. The term means, literally, "true dicotyledons" as it contains the majority of plants that have been considered dicotyledons and have typical dicotyledonous characters. Traditionally the dicots have been called the Dicotyledones (or Dicotyledoneae), at any rank. If treated as a class, as in the Cronquist system, they may be called the Magnoliopsida after the type genus Magnolia. In some schemes, the eudicots are treated as a separate class, the Rosopsida (type genus Rosa), or as several separate classes. The remaining dicots (paleodicots) may be kept in a single paraphyletic class, called Magnoliopsida, or further divided.
Fortunately the Monocotyledons have remained unchanged as a discrete group and, to date, no serious effort has been made to change their name. The monocots are considered to form a monophyletic group (i.e having a common evolutionary origin) in contrast to the dicotyledons who are considered to be “polyphyletic” (i.e. having more than one evolutionary origin) and therefore comprised of groups of plants with more than one origin. The monocots, as a monophyletic group, are considered to have arisen early in the history of the flowering plants.
The current taxonomic position of plants called “crocus” is as follows
| Class | Angiospermae | Flowering Plants |
| Subclass | Monocotyledoneae | Monocotyledonous Plants |
| Order – six in total- | Acorales | |
| Alismatales | ||
| Asparagales | ||
| Dioscoreales | ||
| Liliales | ||
| Pandanales |
Now the various “Crocus” genera are in two orders – the Asparagales, containing, amongst 34 families, the Iridaceae, and the Liliales, containing, amongst 11 families, the Liliaceae.
The Amaryllidaceae (c.60 genera & 850 species), once considered close to the Liliaceae (16 genera & c.640 species), are now placed with the Iridaceae (c.70 genera & c.1,800 species) in the order Asparagales along with the Alliaceae (13 genera & c. 750 species), the Hyacinthaceae (c. 70 genera & c. 900 species), the Convallariaceae (17 genera & c. 130 species) and others. At the same time Colchicum has been removed from the family Liliaceae and placed in a family of its own, the Colchicaceae (c.18 genera & c. 225 species), but left in the Order Liliales close to the Liliaceae.
The three families Iridaceae, Amaryllidaceae and Liliaceae were once considered very close together but have now been separated as stated above. They can still be distinguished in the field usually because the Iridaceae have 3 stamens and the ovary is usually inferior though very rarely it is superior and the majority have corms though a few Iris develop genuine bulbs. The Liliaceae differ, normally, in having 6 stamens and a superior ovary but have a wide variety of bulbs, corms, rhizomes or thick fleshy roots. The Amaryllidaceae have 6 stamens and an inferior ovary and usually have a bulbous rootstock though some develop rhizomes. Note the use of the words “usually” and “normally”.
Just how confused and contentious the situation can be is evident in the on-going arguments about the position of the Genus Allium – onions and their close relatives. This genus has been included, by some taxonomists, in the Amaryllidaceae whilst others have placed it in its own separate family, the Alliaceae, within the Order Asparagales. This now appears to be the current position. The problem lies in the fact that the Alliums are a transitional group lying between the Amaryllidaceae and the Liliaceae though it is now thought they are related more closely to the Amaryllidaceae.
Other arguments continue about the two genera Ophiopogon and Liriope, both of which I grow in my garden and used to consider were members of the Liliaceae, but there are taxonomists who have argued for their inclusion in the Haemodoraceae. Now most taxonomists place Ophiopogon and Liriope, along with Convallaria (Lily of the Valley) and Polygonatum (Solomon’s Seal) in the small family Convallariaceae, in evolutionary terms close to the Asparagaceae in the order Asparagales, because they form a discrete group all with rhizomes and flowers in a spike or raceme and with similar molecular data.
It would be foolish of me to say that the current taxonomic position has been decided and is unlikely to change in the future. Indeed arguments still rage today and goodness knows what the final outcome might be. More name changes are inevitable. My conclusion is that nobody likes an argument as much as a taxonomist does!
If anyone wishes to delve further into either Plant Taxonomy or the complexity of plant names I recommend David Gledhill’s excellent book “The Names of Plants”. A 4th edition was published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press.
Robert Yates