I remember my father's warning "I Colchici sono velenosi!", whereby he was teaching me two things at once: a) not to mess with this beauty and b) the correct, irregular, plural word, since the regular way of pluralizing it would have been Colchichi (Col-quee-quee) instead of Colchici (Col-quee-chee). By the way, there are so many irregularities in the Italian grammar that, as a child, having to learn them all, I would often wonder why bother with anything regular at all...just make things up!