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Bulbous perennial of the Colchicaceae family, this species is native to southern Turkey and northern Syria, in the historical region of Cilicia from which it derives its epithet. It inhabits rocky slopes, open garrigues, and sunny limestone slopes, at altitudes ranging from 500 to 2,000 meters, on well-drained and poor soils, subject to marked summer drought.
It is one of the most robust and generous species of the genus: each corm can simultaneously produce a large number of flowers, sometimes up to twenty, creating a mass effect on the ground rarely achieved in colchicums. The flowers are a strong lilac-pink to pink-purple, with broad and rounded tepals, slightly funnel-shaped, carried by long whitish tubes emerging directly from the ground in autumn, before any appearance of leaves.
In its natural habitat, flowering extends from October to November. The foliage, broad and erect, appears the following spring. Like the entire genus, the plant is toxic.
In cultivation, it appreciates a sunny location, a well-drained soil, dry in summer, and is particularly suited to rock gardens and Mediterranean gardens. Its exceptional floral vigor makes it one of the most spectacular species of the genus for the autumn period.