21 photographs › At a glance
- Jan, shaded
- Feb, shaded
- Mar
- Apr
- May
- Jun, under 5 mm of rain
- Jul, under 5 mm of rain
- Aug, under 5 mm of rain
- Sep
- Oct
- Nov, shaded
- Dec, shaded
Summary
Crocus sieberi, Sieber's crocus, also referred to as the Cretan crocus or snow crocus (as is Crocus chrysanthus), is a plant of the genus Crocus in the family Iridaceae. A small, early blooming crocus, it easily naturalises, and is marked by a brilliant orange which is mostly confined to the stamens and style, fading through the bottom third of the tepal. It grows wild generally in the Balkans: Greece, especially in the island of Crete, Bulgaria, Albania and North Macedonia. There are four subtypes: sieberi (Crete), atticus (Attica area around Athens), nivalis and sublimis. More on Wikipedia ›
Quoted from Wikipedia, "Crocus sieberi", CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the genus · Crocus
Crocus is a genus of seasonal flowering plants in the family Iridaceae comprising about 100 species of perennials growing from corms.
Quoted from Wikipedia, "Crocus", CC BY-SA 4.0.
Cultivation
Grouped as a bulb, tuber or caudex, listed under the genus Crocus in the archetype table, and Kew describes it as “tuberous geophyte”.
Seasons
The rain rule reads a rainy season and no growing season: 70% of the median year's rain (701 mm of 994 mm) falls in November to February, the cooler part of the year, but the mean nightly low is below freezing in March, so the rule reads no growing season from it. Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere; shifted six months for a southern-hemisphere collection: May to August.
Rain
994 mm in the median year at the habitat, 701 mm of it November to February. Wettest month December at 194 mm, driest month July at 2 mm; 3 months under 5 mm. Across the grid cells of the range the year's total runs 845 mm to 1,169 mm, the 10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year. The median of the cells' own yearly totals, 997 mm, is the year's rain at the top of the page; the 994 mm here is the median year's, the twelve monthly medians added, which the rain rule reads. Habitat calendar, northern hemisphere; median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA.
Light
Open sky over the habitat: 15 to 52 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 13, the highest 90th-percentile month 52).
Warmth and air
Monthly means: the coldest month's mean nightly low -0.1 °C in February (across the grid cells of the range -2.5 °C to 7.3 °C), the warmest month's mean daily high 23.1 °C in August (median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA). Cold floor: none read. The nearest figure is -0.1 °C, the coldest month's mean nightly low, February, in the median year (CHELSA); a month's mean of its nightly lows is warmer than the nights a floor is read from. The daily extremes were read at a weather cell whose ground is too far above or below the typical spot to correct for, and are not used.
Relative humidity at the habitat: 44 to 62% across the year (monthly means, median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.
How this section is made
Each card states this species' habitat figures with their sources, and what two fixed rules read from them; nothing here says what the plant does, wants or tolerates. The rules · the terms.
Seasons. Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the grid cells of the range: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve moves 4 °C or more and the habitat lies 10° or more from the equator. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.
Rain. CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the grid cells of the range. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.
Light. CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.
Temperature. CHELSA monthly means, median year across the grid cells of the range. No cold floor is read without a daily extremes series; the coldest month's mean nightly low named in its sentence is not one. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.
Humidity. CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the grid cells of the range.
Group. Listed under the genus Crocus in the archetype table, and Kew describes it as “tuberous geophyte”. A group is taken only where Kew's description of the species agrees with the table's listing. The table gives no figure and no prose; the cold floor is the habitat's alone.
Climate across the habitat
Habitat months, northern hemisphere
Mean daily high from 6 °C in Jan and Feb to 23 °C in Jul and Aug; mean nightly low from 0 °C in Feb to 16 °C in Aug. The cold quarter, Jan to Mar, is the three months around the coldest month's mean nightly low. 994 mm of rain in the median year (the twelve monthly medians added), the wettest month Dec. The bands show the 10th to 90th percentile across 12 habitat cells. Beneath: daily light integral and relative humidity through the year, each on its own scale.
Figures by month
| Figure | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day °C | 6 / 3–11 | 6 / 2–10 | 8 / 5–12 | 13 / 9–15 | 17 / 13–19 | 21 / 17–23 | 23 / 19–25 | 23 / 19–25 | 20 / 17–23 | 16 / 13–19 | 11 / 8–15 | 7 / 4–12 |
| Night °C | 1 / -2–8 | 0 / -3–7 | 2 / 0–9 | 5 / 3–11 | 9 / 7–15 | 13 / 11–19 | 15 / 13–21 | 16 / 13–22 | 13 / 11–20 | 10 / 8–16 | 6 / 4–13 | 3 / 0–10 |
| Rain mm | 191 / 168–229 | 154 / 126–186 | 106 / 89–124 | 49 / 41–59 | 23 / 19–25 | 4 / 4–5 | 2 / 2–3 | 3 / 2–3 | 23 / 20–27 | 83 / 65–88 | 162 / 136–192 | 194 / 165–230 |
| DLI | 18 / 15–20 | 23 / 21–26 | 32 / 30–34 | 40 / 39–42 | 47 / 46–47 | 52 / 50–52 | 51 / 50–51 | 46 / 45–48 | 37 / 36–40 | 27 / 25–30 | 19 / 17–21 | 15 / 13–17 |
| RH % | 61 / 54–66 | 61 / 54–65 | 54 / 49–60 | 49 / 45–57 | 46 / 44–53 | 44 / 42–51 | 45 / 41–52 | 46 / 42–53 | 49 / 45–55 | 53 / 48–59 | 57 / 52–63 | 62 / 55–67 |
The daily extremes were not used: the correction for elevation, +1304 m, is beyond the 1,000 m either way that a lapse rate is applied over, so the weather cell's ground is other terrain than the typical spot's. So no cold floor is read for this species, and the coldest month's mean nightly low is not taken as one. What that cell gave, so corrected, over 44 years: absolute minimum -4.4 °C, 1st-percentile night -1.0 °C.
How this section is made
Natural habitat
How this section is made
Photographs
Photographs: (c) Grzegorz Grzejszczak, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) (5); (c) gwynmwilliams, some rights reserved (CC BY).
Related
Similar habitat climate The 6 nearest by mean daily high, mean nightly low and rain, month by month. How.
Draba cretica Brassicaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Grzegorz Grzejszczak
Scilla nana Dwarf Glory-of-the-snow Photo: CC BY, Felicia Seichter Satureja spinosa Lamiaceae 
Arum idaeum Araceae Photo: CC BY, fmunoz
Berberis cretica Cretan Barberry Photo: CC BY, Robert Martin Colchicum parnassicum Colchicaceae Other Crocus 111 in the reference
Crocus abantensis Iridaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Averater
Crocus adanensis Iridaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Zeynel Cebeci Crocus aerius Aerial Crocus 
Crocus alatavicus Iridaceae Photo: CC BY, Oleg Kosterin
Crocus aleppicus Aleppo Crocus Photo: CC BY, yelena_antipova Crocus alexandri Iridaceae 
Crocus ancyrensis Ankara Crocus Photo: CC BY-SA, Guérin Nicolas
Crocus angustifolius Cloth of gold Photo: CC BY, Igor Balashov Crocus antalyensis Iridaceae Crocus asumaniae Iridaceae 
Crocus atticus Iridaceae Photo: CC BY, Marco Zaccaria Di Fraia Crocus autranii Iridaceae all 112 ›Names & registers
Also known as Crocus sibiricus; Crocus sibthorpianus; Crocus sibthorpianus var. angustifolius; Crocus sibthorpianus var. latifolius; Crocus sibthorpianus var. stauricus and 4 more. (GBIF Backbone)
Under another author Crocus vernus Sm., 1806 is an older name of this species, not Crocus vernus, a species of the reference. (GBIF Backbone)
The record
Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →
Where this page came from built 2026-10-22
gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-22names fetched 2026-10-22wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21; 88 records within 1 km of a botanic garden, herbarium or zoo left out (80 at a botanic garden or arboretum, 1 at a herbarium, 7 at a zoo; Wikidata's list)climate answeredasked 2026-10-22climate.extremes answeredasked 2026-10-22NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 35.50_24.375, lapse-corrected +1304 m at 6.5 °C/km; read, and set aside: the correction for elevation, +1304 m, is beyond the 1,000 m either way that a lapse rate is applied over, so the weather cell's ground is other terrain than the typical spot's, so no cold floor is shownwikidata answeredasked 2026-10-22wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-22inat.photos.wild answeredasked 2026-10-22from iNaturalist's open data of 2026-09-27: research-grade observations with an open-licence photograph, the 24 whose photographs iNaturalist received last (the open data holds no votes); filled 2026-10-22inat.photos.cultivated not askedgbif.media answeredasked 2026-10-22none of the photographs on this page is credited to GBIF: those shown are other sources', and GBIF's were the same photographs or were set aside by the photograph rulesopenalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshotEvery source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 28 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.