Description
(formerly Leucojum trichophyllum)
This Iberian and N. African plant remains very little seen in cultivation. It is, in my experience, one of the very few plants where the British obsession with lime or acid soils actually has some relevance to cultivation. I have consistently found that it does better in an acid soil. This is borne out in the wild, across Portugal where it forms extensive colonies over acid sands but is hardly found on the limestones and when it is, it is depauperate.
In the UK it does well, in a pot of very sandy loam (actually what I use is closer to a loamy sand) ! It flowers in early spring with very narrow grassy leaves and spikes of 2-3 flowers of crystalline white. These normally have a pink tinge at the ovary end but this can extend right across the flower as in the stock we now offer. This species does make offsets, but unlike most bulbs, these are produced at the top of the old bulb, in the manner of an underground Pleione.
Raised from seed of JJA.630.501
