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Fritillaria meleagris
Also called Chequered daffodil, Chess flower, Drooping tulip, Fritillary, Frog-cup, Guinea flower, Guinea-hen flower
A small Eurasian spring bulb with drooping, checkered purple or white bell-shaped flowers, grown in gardens and native to damp meadows. It needs moist soil in spring and is best planted in fall in dappled or full sun.
Fritillaria meleagris is a Eurasian species of flowering plant in the lily family Liliaceae. Its common names include snake's head fritillary, snake's head (the original English name), chess flower, frog-cup, guinea-hen flower, guinea flower, leper lily (because its shape resembled the bell once carried by lepers), Lazarus bell, chequered lily, chequered daffodil, drooping tulip or, in the British Isles, simply fritillary. The plant is a bulbous perennial native to the flood river plains of Europe where it grows in abundance.
Now easily available as an ornamental spring bulb for the garden, it is commonly sold as a mixture of different coloured cultivars. The species and the pure white-flowered variety F. meleagris var. unicolor subvar. alba have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Fritillaria meleagris is native to Europe and western Asia but in many places it is an endangered species that is rarely found in the wild but is commonly grown in gardens. In Croatia, the flower is known as kockavica and is associated by some with the country's national symbol. It is the official flower of the Swedish province of Uppland, where it grows in large numbers every spring in the meadows of Kungsängen ("King's Meadow"), just outside Uppsala, which gives the flower its Swedish name, kungsängslilja ("king's meadow lily"). It is also found, for example, in Sandemar Nature Reserve, a nature reserve west of Dalarö in the Stockholm Archipelago.
Fritillaria meleagris is used in a variety of planting situations, such as in: borders, containers, cottage and informal gardens, woodland gardens, wildflower meadows, rock gardens or naturalized areas.
Fritillaria acmopetala · Checker lily · Kamchatka fritillary · Fritillaria chitralensis · Fritillaria eduardii · Imperial fritillary · Sinkiang Fritillaria · Persian Fritillary · Fritillaria pontica · Yellow fritillary · Pyrenean Snake's Head · Fritillary
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Fritillaria meleagris by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
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.
