Seeing Double

Crocuses do things in threes. Two whorls of three petals, three pollen bearing anthers and style which divides into three. Well they usually do! Occasionally a 'double' appears, a flower with extra petals. Sometimes they are lopsided misfits but often they are well balanced and very attractive. Here is the second flower on a corm of Crocus pestalozzae that featured a few days ago. It does it all in fours.

I have had doubles in fives and sixes but none of them are stable, just seasonal mutations, not even being the same in all flowers from the same corm.

Notice the dark marks in the throat of the flower. E. A. Bowles, garden writer and crocus guru of the early 20th Century said they look like grains of soil, dropped into the flower. In fact they are marks on the base of the filaments which support the anthers and are a distinguishing feature of this species.