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Colchicum ritchii
Colchicum ritchii, or the Egyptian autumn crocus, is a plant species native to the southeastern Mediterranean east to the Arabian Peninsula.
Colchicum ritchii is a plant of sand and loess soils in desert and shrub-steppes .
Extracts from Colchicum ritchii are used in traditional medicine to treat arthritis, rheumatism, gout and abdominal colics. Bedouin children dig up the corms from the desert to sell them after drying them to herbalists in Alexandria and other Egyptian cities. The anti-inflammatory drug colchicine was originally extracted from closely related species to this plant in ancient Egypt.
African Crocus · Alpine Autumn Crocus · Colchicum atropurpureum · Autumn crocus · White Autumn Crocus · Colchicum baytopiorum · Colchicum boissieri · Colchicum szovitsii subsp. brachyphyllum · Spring Meadow Saffron · False Autumn Crocus · Tenore Autumn Crocus · Colchicum corsicum
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Colchicum ritchii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
