Like the Greeks before them, the English have a word for it. And when it comes to garden plants they are especially prolific. Across the wide Atlantic, others have been known to gleefully grab onto this.
“[American Ladew] admired the [naked lady] lilies in a friend’s garden,” says chief gardener Tyler Diehl, according to Robert M. Poole in the Smithsonian magazine. “The friend cabled to say he would send 50 naked ladies to Monkton if Mr. Ladew could handle them. Mr. Ladew cabled back, saying that he could easily handle 50 naked ladies if they were disease free. Of course he knew the message would scandalize telegraph operators at both ends, which was part of the fun.”
Call them naked ladies if you like. The more inhibited will refer to them as meadow saffron or autumn crocus. But they are neither. Colchicum autumnale are cousins of iris, not the true crocus – although just to confuse matters, some of the latter do flower in the fall, including Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus, which yields that fabulous food flavouring. Like them, however, they should be planted as early in fall as possible.
Seriously threatened today in many of their native habitats, Colchicum come from Western Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean littoral. C. autumnale is only species native to Britian. While botanists recognize about 60 species in the family Colchicaceae, C. autumnale is by far the commonest found in cultivation. Keen bulb fanciers also dote on such others as C. album, C. byzantinum, C. cilicium, C. corsicum, and C. speciosum.
Upon first encountering the large, leafless silk-like blooms people inquire if they are artificial. Selection has produced corms yielding pink, lavender, lilac or white flowers, some even double. Many so much resemble waterlilies that they have become known by such soubriquet.
But why the name ‘naked ladies’? The leaves, up to 12-inches long, emerge in spring, only to die back by early summer when the corm goes dormant and can survive prolonged drought. The flowers emerge in early autumn sans foliage, hence the name ‘naked ladies’ at least to the uninhibited English whose literature used the name Colchicum prior to 1718.
‘Colchicum’ though derives from the Greek Colchis, an ancient province in Asia, located east of the Black Sea. This was also believed to be the home of the sorceress Media. Given other attributes of the plant, this might be singularly appropriate.
Another remarkable fact: squirrels avoid nibbling on naked ladies. So should everybody else. They contain the poisonous alkaloid colchicines for which there is no antidote. Fatalities have occurred when foragers mistook the plant for ransoms or wild garlic (Allium ursinum).
Before the advent of far less dangerous and more reliable medications, colchicines were widely used in the treatment of gout. And for murder: in the 19th-century, English nurse Catherine Wilson (born 1822) is believed to have poisoned perhaps seven people with colchicines, including her husband, although she was convicted of murder just one, for which she was hung on 20 October 1862.
Far more pleasantly, thanks to its habit of reviving to bloom in fall, Colchicum autumnale has become the symbol of Ontario’s Bruce Peninsular Hospice, which provides non-medical help to those suffering from cancer.
Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.
