Photo: Public domain (via Wikimedia Commons)
Autumn Crocus
Colchicum autumnale
Also known as Meadow Saffron, Naked Ladies, Autumn Crocus, Wonder Bulb
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦For centuries, the corms and seeds of Colchicum autumnale were gathered with great caution by apothecaries who understood its narrow margin between remedy and poison, and extracts were historically used for gout and painful swelling of the joints long before the active compound colchicine was ever isolated in a laboratory. Physicians as far back as the Byzantine era wrote of its powerful effect on joint pain, even as they warned of its dangers in the same breath. Today the plant's legacy lives on almost entirely in conventional medicine, where purified colchicine remains a prescribed treatment for gout and familial Mediterranean fever, a striking example of a garden flower whose chemistry crossed fully into the pharmacy. In the garden and meadow, though, it is beloved simply for the surprise of its bare, goblet-shaped blooms rising from bare soil each fall.
How to grow & use it
✦The full apothecary for Autumn Crocus
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“A flash of lavender rising from bare earth as the meadow turns toward frost, best admired from a respectful distance.”
Autumn crocus flowers earned the folk name naked ladies because the blossoms rise straight from bare soil each fall with no leaves in sight. The strappy leaves do not appear until the following spring, grow tall and green through the season, then die back completely by summer, leaving the ground empty and waiting for the flowers to surprise everyone all over again come autumn.
Every part of Colchicum autumnale, the corm, the leaves, the flowers, and the seeds, is highly toxic and contains colchicine, a compound with no reliable antidote once ingested in quantity. Poisoning can begin with vomiting and severe abdominal cramping and progress, in serious cases, to organ failure and death, sometimes after a deceptive delay of many hours between exposure and the first symptoms. The spring leaves are notorious for being mistaken for wild garlic or ramps by foragers, and this mix-up has caused fatal poisonings in Europe. This plant should never be gathered, prepared, or taken internally by anyone without formal medical training, should be kept well away from children, pets, and grazing livestock, and should only be handled in the garden with gloves. The purified pharmaceutical compound colchicine, derived from this plant, is used in modern medicine for gout and certain inflammatory conditions, but strictly under a physician's supervision and in carefully calculated doses. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional or poison control center immediately if ingestion is suspected, and do not attempt any home preparation of this plant.