Leafless at flowering in autumn, leaves produced in spring as fruit ripens. Corm 3-5 cm long, ovate; sheaths dark brown, ± leathery, elongate. Leaves 15-35 × 2-5 cm, spreading, clustered 4 or more, linear-to broadly-lanceolate, bright glossy-green, flat, ± obtuse, glabrous or slightly papillose on margins. Flowers solitary or 2-4, rarely more, pale to deep lilac, rarely white, 8-25 cm long, tube 2-5 times as long as oblong-elliptic lobes. Ovary remaining at base of perianth-tube in ground; styles very long, = or > stamens, recurved at tip to a small obtuse orange stigma. Capsule remaining underground until leaves are mature, when scape elongates and appears above ground ensheathed by leaves, to 8 cm long, oblong-ovate, acute, many-seeded, Seeds c. 3-6 mm diam., many, subglobose, brown, ± rough.
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Autumn-crocus, rarely escapes from cult. Its poisonous bulbs produce in autumn 1–3 rose-purple fls the bases of which are below-ground; the perianth is funnelform with a long (to 2 dm) pedicel-like tube and expands above into a limb 5 cm wide; the lanceolate lvs appear the following spring.
A herb. It produces 1-3 red to purple flowers.
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