I received as a gift a jute planting container. Included was a bag labeled 'winter flower bulbs'. The bulbs look like hard, dark brown, shriveled things about the size and shape of a little- larger- than- normal chocolate chip. Does anyone know what kind of flower they might be? Thanks so much for your help!!

Hi,

Would you be able to take a photo and upload it so we can see what they are? If they are winter flowering, then that will definitely narrow it down.

My guess would be Ranunculus. They are available at nurseries very early in the Spring.

Unfortunately, it takes me forever to figure out how to post a picture! I can tell you that I have looked at images of the following spring blooming bulbs, and none of them seem to match the description I gave on my first post: crocus, anenome, ranuculus, windflower, scilla, glory of the snow, winter aconite, snowdrop and puschkinia. Gosh, what's left for very early bloomers???

Oxalis bulb?

example -

Ranunculus, Anemone....Hard to say without a pic.

Another small bulb though this one usually is considered a summer bloomer:

Cyclamen ? pic -

Ixia ?
pic -

Sparaxis ?

Fritillaria ?

what color are the mystery bulbs?

Fressia?

Ok, everyone--with a little help from my friends--my son to be exact :), I can now show you a picture of these mystery bulbs! Thank all of you so much for posting your pictures--the one I thought they most look like was the picture of the achimenes cattleya bulbs. What do the rest of you think??

Me again--I just googled more close-up images of achimenes cattleya bulbs--nope--they don't look like that at all!! What the heck are they??

Kind of reminds me of Ranunculus too:

G'day Pinkruffles, your ''bulbs'' are those of Anemone coronaria

Thank you so very much, Paul,--and EVERYONE, for your help, suggestions, and pictures!!! Looking back on the responses, I see that Lee-Roy also suggested anemone. I did check out every suggestion given to me on google images and I it seemed to me that none of them matched what I had. But when I typed in 'anemone coronaria' instead of just 'anemone', I got some different images--one of which showed me that some of the bulbs look like shriveled, pointy chocolate chips, and others have a rounder bumpy shape, just like mine. Mystery finally solved!!

Also worth considering is Erythronium - so name dens-canis because of their similarity to a dog's tooth.

@pinkruffles Did your bulbs ever grow?