Evergreen List
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Evergreen List
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Gentian Family [Gentianaceae] 
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category
status
flower
inner
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morph
petals
type
stem
rarity
| 20th April 2013, Buckland Hills, Surrey. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| Up to 6cm tall with most of the height being taken up by a trumpet-shaped and upwardly-directly extremely long inflorescence. [The specimens from Bulgaria shown much further below do not seem as long as this one]. |
| 20th April 2013, Buckland Hills, Surrey. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| Flower is deep-blue with five petals. The tips are unusually white here probably due to frost damage. The inside of the tube of the flower has five broad greenish-grey stripes. |
| 20th April 2013, Buckland Hills, Surrey. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| From the outside the petals have fine darker veins and greenish-white markings where the stripes are inside. |
| 20th April 2013, Buckland Hills, Surrey. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
Within the flower the green-grey stripes are covered in un-usual small raised pimples. |
| 20th April 2013, Buckland Hills, Surrey. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| The lower half of the long linearly-tapered flower has darker spots visible from outside (probably due to more 'pimples' inside). The sepal tube is light-green. |
| 20th April 2013, Buckland Hills, Surrey. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| Leaves short and alternate, lanceolate to oblanceolate, clasping the stem. |
| 1st June 2015, Bavaria. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| And then 4 come along at once. The difference in colour between these specimens and the others may be real, or it may be a slight colour temperature setting variation within the camera. |
| 1st June 2015, Bavaria. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| The sepal teeth of specimens of Koch's Gentian seem to vary a bit, even on the internet. These teeth are more pronounced than most. A slight mid-riff bulge in the petal is in evidence here. |
| 1st June 2015, Bavaria. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| A specimen with a prominent mid-riff bulge. |
| 1st June 2015, Bavaria. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| Some specimens may have a bulge in the 'tapered' part followed by an inflexion before the final flare. In this specimen the bulge in the horn is more pronounced than in others - it must play havoc with its acoustic properties creating all sorts of undesirable anharmonic resonances ;-) |
| 1st June 2015, Bavaria. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| The horn several parallel rows of dark-blue dots on the inside of the horn. |
| 1st June 2015, Bavaria. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| The style has a pinkish style near the end terminating with a pale-green stigma. |
| 1st June 2015, Bavaria. | Photo: © Dawn Nelson |
| The pale-green stigma. |
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Uniquely identifiable characteristics Distinguishing Feature : The extreme length of the single trumpet shaped flower rising almost directly from ground level to about 6cm, a unique feature.
Not to be semantically confused with : So rare it is omitted from most UK wild flower books. Originally known from the Alps where it avoided growing on chalk soils (a calcifuge - a chalk hater) it was planted in parts of Surrey in 1960 and now grows wild on chalk grassland as a calciphyte (chalk lover)! Only found in one single hectad. So it looks like it has the genes to enable it to swap allegiances between liking or dis-liking soil alkalinity, an adaption which enables it to grow on both types of soil given enough time to 'acclimatise' itself.
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 Gentiana
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acaulis
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⇐ Global Aspect ⇒ |
Gentianaceae
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 Gentiana (Gentians) |
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Gentian Family [Gentianaceae]
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BSBI maps