The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Sternbergia colchiciflora
A tiny autumn-flowering bulb with slender yellow flowers that appear from the ground in September to November, native from southern Europe to Iran and the Caucasus. Success depends on a long, hot, bone-dry summer dormancy and very sharp drainage.
Sternbergia colchiciflora is a bulbous flowering plant in the family Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Amaryllidoideae, which is sometimes used as an ornamental plant, commonly known as babaluschka. The species is native to southern Europe from Spain to Russia
(in the Stavropol and Krasnodar Krai regions, as well as in the Chechen Republic), as well as from Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestine region, Iran and the Caucasus. It has yellow flowers which appear in autumn.
The species ranges widely from south-eastern Spain through the Balkans and Italy to the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau and western Turkey, inhabiting open, rocky grassland, light scrub and field margins on well-drained calcareous soils between 150 m (490 ft) and about 2,300 m (7,500 ft) elevation. In Mediterranean and steppe climates the bulb endures a long, hot summer dormancy; once autumn rain arrives a brief display of slender, pale to deep-yellow flowers may sprinkle otherwise brown turf. Its minute stature and tendency to hide its blossoms beneath surrounding vegetation mean natural populations are often overlooked, but the plant compensates with reliable seed production and can form loose colonies on undisturbed ground. In gardens it succeeds only if given an extended, warm, absolutely dry rest and a gritty, lime-rich compost; several bulbs planted together in a pot or the sunniest, most free-draining pocket of a rock garden make the discreet display easier to appreciate.
White Sternbergia · Sternbergia clusiana · Winter daffodil · Sternbergia minoica · Pretty Sternbergia · Sternbergia schubertii · Sternbergia vernalis · Vascular Plants
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Sternbergia colchiciflora 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.
