Autumn Flowers are Starting!

The sun hasn’t stopped shining and there’s no rain yet (we wouldn’t expect it just yet…) but those autumn blooms are already well under way! I drove up to the big mountain that dominates our northern horizon this morning and found lovely shows of Colchicum sanguicolle.

This is a particularly fine Colchicum with large often deep pink blooms, the tube clear white and at the base a deep crimson cataphyll. Groups of them decorated marble outcrops by their road but their all time favourite habitat judging by the quantities blooming was the recently deserted goat coral! In the cedar forest the first Colchicum variegatumwere on show. I found some unusually coloured ones this morning. Yellow, with just a hint of pink! Back down in the garden there’s plenty of the slightly less attractive Colchicum balansae already out and the first Cyclamens are just showing. A few days ago I visited the sandy coast at Demre where lots of Sea Daffodils were in bud and a few already in bloom.

These are all just the start – in a few weeks there’ll be so much more in bloom too.

We’ve several tours later in October to enjoy this autumn spectacle – though just one of them is to a region currently on the ‘exempt from quarantine’ list as published by the Foreign Office. This is the Peloponnese from the 20^th – 27^th October – a chance for some lovely warm sunshine and beautiful autumn flowers. More about the birds and butterflies we’re seeing soon…