Fritillaria aurea x pinardii

Sourced from Kath Dryden around the turn of the millennium. Kath's catalogue provided no information about provenance. The literature contains various references to this hybrid (both natural and man-made).

  • The Frit Group ‘Journal’ No13 Pg21 (Autumn 2003) refers to a wild hybrid F. aurea x pinardii collected by Martyn Rix under the number Rix1603.

  • The Roger Phillips & Martyn Rix book 'Bulbs' contains photos of Rix1601 & Rix1602 (found in central Turkey). The example of Rix1602 in this book looks like my plant. The text refers to hybrids made between Rix1602 and F. aurea. Rod Johnson had seedlings of F aurea x fleischeri (F. fleischeri is a synonym of F. pinardii). The source of Rod’s seed is unknown.

  • The Kevin Pratt book has a picture of this hybrid but it is much closer to pinardii than my own plant.

  • Bob & Rannveig Wallis had a plant of Rix1602 at Chesterfield 2010 but this did not match my own plant (alas I have no photo!)

  • Ian Young has a picture on his bulb log that looks much closer to mine. It is his own raising from seed received from Gothenburg and is probably unlikely to be Kath's source of material. See www.srgc.org.uk/bulblog/log2006/050406/log.html

  • I have a picture of Rix1601 in the RBGE exhibit at Hexham 2013 – this differs significantly from my own plant and indeed tallies with the photo of Rix1601 in the 'Bulbs' book.

In conclusion: I think my plant is Rix1602 but cannot be certain.

Which species is the seed parent and which species provided the pollen?

When the seed parent is known the usual convention is to state that parent first, followed by the (assumed) pollen parent.

This is the convention that I've followed in all of the information on this web site.

However, since I don't know the source/derivation of my plant then I cannot know which is the seed parent and which is the pollen parent. Given that my plant was labelled with aurea preceding pinardii it might be assumed that F. aurea is the seed parent, however since I suspect that the plant originated from wild collected material we cannot know this.

We simply don't know (and perhaps we should not even care!)


Examples of the two parent species

It should be noted that neither of the following images are of the actual parents of my plant

Fritillaria aurea


This is a very typical clone of F. aurea and one that I've had for many years. I have no idea of its background but it has clearly persisted in cultivation for several growers.



Fritillaria pinardii Judging from all the plants I've seen in the flesh or images online or in print, this species exhibits considerable variation across its geographic range (much more than is the case with F. aurea).The above image shows my own plant sourced from Janis Ruksans in 2007. The catalogue tells us it originated from Bozkir at 1640m in Turkey and the collection number was RIGA-032.RIGA is R (Ruksans) I (Indra Seisums) G (Guna Ruksans) A (Arnis Seisums)

Fritillaria aurea x pinardii in the wild

During a field trip to Turkey, friends from my local AGS group were taken to a couple of sites where F. aurea and F. pinardii were growing together. Hybrids between the two species were also present and showed a range of colours and forms, although the flower shape was predominantly that of F. aurea. They have kindly shared the following images - taken in the Aladağlar National Park near Yahyali.