do not think that Boissier’s Colchicum cegyptiacum and 
crocifolium are more than Oriental varieties of the same 
species with more numerous flowers to a corm and narrower 
perianth-segments. Although the plant has so wide an area, 
it is very little known in cultivation. In England it appears 
in early spring with the Snowdrops and Crocuses. The 
drawing was made from material furnished by Mr. George 
Maw, who gathered it along with Chionodoxa Lucilie on the 
Nymph Dagh, near Smyrna, under conditions explained in 
detail under our plate of that species, tab. 6433. 
Descr. Corm middle-sized, about an inch in diameter 
when fully developed, furnished with a firm brown tunic, 
and a neck two or three inches long, which is invested with 
a tight-fitting membranous sheath, and reaches to the surface 
of the ground. eaves generally three in number, cotem- 
porary with the flowers, lanceolate or linear, falcate, reaching 
about as high as the flowers, finally half a foot long and an 
inch broad. Flowers two or three inches above the soil, 
hlac-purple or nearly white, with a filiform tube, and a limb 
an inch or an inch and a half long, with oblong or oblanceo- 
late segments. Stamens about half as long as the perianth- 
segments; filaments yellow and thickened at the base; 
anthers small, oblong, versatile, purplish. Styles reaching 
up to the anthers ; stigmas minute, nearly capitate. Capsule 
produced in summer, oblong, about an inch long.—J. G. 
Baker. 
Fig. 1, a flower ent open, life size; fig. 2, an anther, facing outwards; fig. 3, 
an anther viewed from the back; fig. 4, a plant with the leaves and flower- 
wrapper stripped away so as to show the ovary and long styles; fig. 5, stigmatose 
tip of style :—all more or less enlarged. 
