Perennial, bulbous plants spreading throughout the Mediterranean, North Africa and Southwest Asia.
Several species are grown as ornamental garden plants all over the world. In Kythera, the species muscari commutatum, found all over the island, grows almost everywhere, often forming dense carpets of deep purple colour. Most of us call them "kalogerias" or "kalogerakia".
The Latin name of the genus is derived from the Greek word musk, because of the characteristic smell of its flowers. (Musk is a fatty substance with a strong odor,secreted in glands under the skin of the male deer's abdomen and widely used in perfumery.) Commutatum = variable, used for a species that is similar to another already known.
In the east of the island I met some with a completely white colour. Is this a variant or a separate species?;
