Crocuses

This meadow of 100 crocuses, measuring in at over a metre high, will gently sway and transform through different shades of colour in time to enchanting music.

Amy Calder’s sister, Laura, has crocuses poking out of the ground Wednesday at her home in Waterville.

They may point out the crocuses popping along a walkway or daffodils emerging from their winter nap.

Crocuses blooming in the author’s garden.

Oban Rotary has participated in the scheme and readers may remember the very successful crocus scheme it ran which involved selling handmade lapel crocuses to raise funds.

It’s around that time that the crocuses, daffodils, pansies, tulips and rhododendrons return, too.

Some of the crocuses are lingering to give a relief from the blazing yellow daffodils.

Among the first flowers to bloom in spring, crocuses are popular with gardeners.

Crocus flowers and leaves are protected from frost by a waxy cuticle; in areas where snow and frost occasionally occur in the early spring, it is not uncommon to see early flowering crocuses blooming through a light late snowfall.

Metaphorical use The financial community sometimes refers to companies or economic sectors that rise early after an economic downturn as "crocuses" in reference to the flower's ability to thrive in the late winter or early spring.

Some crocuses, especially C. tommasinianus and its selected forms and hybrids (such as 'Whitewell Purple' and 'Ruby Giant'), seed prolifically and are ideal for naturalising.

The city takes pride in the many flowers that bloom during the winter and early spring, including crocuses, daffodils, early-blooming rhododendrons, cherry and plum trees.

Their flowering time varies from the late winter C. tommasinianus to the later large hybridized and selected Giant "Dutch crocuses" (C.