Naked Ladies

Yes, that is a cheap, attention-seeking headline; botanically, 'naked ladies' is nothing more than a slightly salacious name for autumn crocus aka meadow saffron aka Colchicum autumnale. This plant's ‘nakedness’ stems from its lack of leaves, which aren’t produced until spring – the beautiful lilac flowers, very attractive to bees, appear without any accompanying foliage in grassy places in early autumn. This is a rare wild plant and most specimens that turn up – like these beside a road in Weardale – are probably garden escapes. In the wild the plant was ruthlessly eliminated because it’s extremely poisonous to grazing livestock, thanks to the presence of toxic colchicine in all parts of the plant. Like many plant poisons colchicine has been used medicinally, in very low doses, to treat gout. It’s also used by crop breeders to double the number of chromosomes in plants, because the drug allows cell nuclei to divide without the cell they are in dividing, so doubling the number of chromosomes in the cell - a phenomenon known as tetraploidy. More chromosomes per cell tend to produce larger cells and larger cells lead to larger plants and better crops. All sorts of unnaturally large plants, ranging from some strawberry varieties strawberries to hyacinths, have been bred using this long-standing form of genetic manipulation, which has been in use for over a century. Crossing a tetraploid with a plant with a normal complement of chromosomes produces plants called triploids, with three sets of chromosomes per cell, which are seed- sterile – a common breeding technique for producing seedless fruit.