Late crocus
Crocus serotinus
Family · Iridaceae · Harmless
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
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The wild crocus that flowers when everything else is drying up, a lilac cup rising straight from the ground. It is not poisonous, and that is exactly why it is here: it is the harmless plant that meadow saffron imitates, and telling them apart is a matter of counting stamens.
Scrubland · Pine woods · Fields and pasture · Uplands · Oak woods
Also known asautumn crocus, Salzmann's crocus
How to tell it
A solitary cup-shaped flower, pale lilac to nearly white, with six equal segments. THREE yellow stamens, and a style splitting into three bright orange branches. The leaves are narrow as needles, with a white line down the middle, and appear with the flower or just after. Meadow saffron, which kills, has SIX stamens and broad leaves that only appear in spring. Counting the stamens is the one mark that never fails.
What it is confused with
Mountain meadow saffron
Colchicum montanum
SIX stamens, not three. The flower segments are narrower and separate almost to the base instead of forming a cup. It kills: colchicine has no antidote and symptoms appear only hours later, when it is already late.
Autumn crocus
Colchicum autumnale
SIX stamens, a larger flower in a deeper pink-lilac. In spring it puts out a tuft of broad glossy leaves that gets confused with wild leek, and that is when it kills most.
What it is for
No use
Culinary saffron comes from a different species, Crocus sativus, which is cultivated and does not grow wild in the field: its three red stigmas are the spice. Picking wild crocus hoping for seasoning is how the confusion starts, and the confusion next door is fatal.
Where it occurs
Sources
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