Crocus malyi - Botanic Crocus

The Crocus malyi is a botanical crocus also known as Maly crocus, native and endemic to Croatia. It produces white flowers with a yellow throat and a brownish spot at the base of the segments on the outside, where the style extends well beyond the anthers. Similar to Crocus imperati and Crocus versicolor, it differs by its unmarked white flowers on the outside of the petals. It is an attractive species that often covers lawns or meadows, flower beds, and rockeries. It can be grown in full sun or partial shade, in any well-drained soil, even poor soil.

The Crocus malyi belongs to the Iridaceae family and is native to Croatia. It forms clumps of 10 cm in height with a rapid growth rate, and three to five leaves emerge at the time of flowering. The flowering takes place from February to March. The plants produce delicate flowers, measuring 2 to 3.5 cm in length. They are cup-shaped, star-shaped, and white. The centre of the flower is filled with yellow stamens grouped in a tube. The flowers close at night and in bad weather, and open wide in the sun. The foliage is deciduous, composed of thin, shiny, medium green linear leaves with a white-silver central band. The bulbs are corms. A corm is an underground storage organ in plant morphology that resembles a bulb but is formed by a swollen stem surrounded by scales.

The Crocus malyi looks wonderful in rockeries and can also be used to create pretty temporary pots. It also thrives in the edge of woodlands with spring snowflakes, along hedges, planted en masse at the base of deciduous shrubs (lilacs, mock oranges, viburnums) with blue windflowers and coum cyclamens, or in the middle of a short grass meadow with winter aconites, snowdrops, or a carpet of violets, and of course, combined with other early-flowering crocuses. Note that this plant can be used for green roofs.

A tip for crocuses: the roots have the particular ability to contract like a spring, allowing the plant to settle at the ideal depth.