''Colchicum boisseri'' is a plant species in the genus ''

Colchicum ''Colchicum'' ( or ) is a genus of perennial flowering plants containing around 160 species which grow from bulb-like corms. It is a member of the botanical family Colchicaceae, and is native to West Asia, Europe, parts of the Mediterranean coas ...

'' (the autumn crocuses) native to southern

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

and south-western

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

but cultivated elsewhere as an ornamental.Theodhoros Georgios Orphanides. 1876. Atti Cong. Bot. Firenze 1874 (1876) 31. The species is unique for its spreading,

rhizomatous In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow ho ...

bulbs. It blooms well with 5 cm (2") blooms in a bright cherry pink. The stamens are yellow. The flowers have no

tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety o ...

s, only a white line down the centre of each petal.Autumn Bulbs by Roy Leeds (B.T. Batsford Ltd) 2006 It is named after botanist

Pierre Edmond Boissier Pierre Edmond Boissier (25 May 1810 Geneva – 25 September 1885 Valeyres-sous-Rances) was a Swiss prominent botanist, explorer and mathematician. He was the son of Jacques Boissier (1784-1857) and Caroline Butini (1786-1836), daughter of Pie ...

References

boissieri Flora of Greece Plants described in 1876 Garden plants {{Liliales-stub