At this time of the year, there’s nothing more cheering than a little pot of gold by the front door, and to be sure, when I chose these last autumn, I had little idea that they would be such a success. The weather has not been kind these past couple of weeks and certainly not for crocuses, no chance of sun here, and now it won’t stop raining!
But make no mistake, ‘Gipsy Girl’ is a crocus for a rainy day, it seems to be remarkably resilient to bad weather and recovers well afterwards. Furthermore, even when the day is grey, if this little crocus so much as contemplates the possibility of the sun coming out, it will start to open up.
The consensus is that this is one of the earliest flowering yellow crocuses. Its luminous outer petals are marked with distinctive, feathered, mahogany brown stripes, and the inner petals are a paler yellow.
My photograph below shows ‘Gipsy Girl’ after being subjected to almost twelve hours of non-stop rain: looking a little ‘down and out’ but at least those handsome tiger stripes are on show! If I could change one thing it would be the name – sounds a little outdated don’t you think?
NB Louise has published a beautifully produced book of her plant profiles – A Plant for Each Week of the Year. It costs £9.99 and is for sale in our online shop here.
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