Autumn crocus

Colchicum autumnale

Family · Colchicaceae · Can kill

Toxic

Read this before the sheet

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

Autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale) — Várkonyi Tibor, CC BY-SA 4.0 · This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder. Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author and send me a message. This image is not in the public domain. Please respect the copyright protection. It may only be used according to the rules mentioned here. This specifically excludes use in social media, if applicable terms of the licenses listed here not appropriate. Please do not upload an updated image here without consultation with the Author. The author would like to make corrections only at his own source. This ensures that the changes are preserved.Please if you think that any changes should be required, please inform the author.Otherwise you can upload a new image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract., CC BY-SA 3.0

The lilac flower that rises out of the ground in autumn with not a single leaf around it, as if someone had stuck it there. It is one of Europe's deadliest plants and has no antidote.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Uplands · Oak woods

Also known as

meadow saffron, naked lady

In flower

How to tell it

In autumn: a solitary pink-lilac flower with no leaves. In spring: a tuft of broad glossy leaves with no smell at all, and that is when it is dangerous, because it looks like a wild garlic or a lily. Range: mainly a Spanish plant, practically absent from Portugal.

What it is confused with

Wild leek

Allium ampeloprasum

Confusion that kills

This confusion has killed people across Europe. The rule is smell: garlic smells of garlic. Autumn crocus smells of nothing. If it does not smell, do not pick it.

Open sheet →Side by side

What it is for

None

The colchicine it contains is used as an exact-dose, controlled-manufacture medicine; in the plant, the margin between effect and death is extremely narrow. It is also toxic to livestock and passes into milk.

Where it occurs

Iberian Peninsula

Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.

Sources

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