Tas, 6090, 
COLCHICUM PARKINSONI, 
Native of the Greek Archipelago. 
i” 
Nat. Ord. MevantHaceg..—<Tribe CoLCHICER. 
Genus Cotcuicum, Tourn. ; (Endl. Gen. Plant., p. 137). 
Cotcutcum Parkinsoni ; hysteranthum, cormo magnitudine avellane, foliis 
patulis prostratis et humi appressis, elongato-lanceolatis acuminetis 
margine insigniter undulatis, perianthii 3-4 poll. diametro tubo albo 
segmentis patenti-recurvisalbis pulcherrime purpureotessellatis elliptico- 
lanceolatis subacutis, antheris ceruleis, polline fusco-purpureo, stigma- 
tibus minutis incurvis perianthii segmentis multo brevioribus. 
? Cotcnicum chionense, Haw.,; ex Kunth. Enum., vol. iv. p. 189, sub 
C. variegatum. 
C. Fritillaricum Chiense, Parkins. Parad., p. 155, f. 5, et p. 156. 
“wer 
This charming Meadow Saffron appears to have been actu- 
ally lost sight of by botanists for nearly two and a half cen- 
turies. It is originally very accurately described and rudely 
figured by Parkinson, in the “Paradisus Terrestris,” pub- 
lished in 1629, where it is distinguished from the other tessel- 
lated-flowered Colchicums by its smaller size, brighter, clearer 
colouring, and the undulated leaves lying flat on and ap- 
pressed to the ground. ; 
Ray, in his “ Historia Plantarum,” p. 1172, published in 
1688, keeps up Parkinson’s plant under his name, but adds 
to it Cornutis’s C. variegatum as the same thing; in this he 
was mistaken, for a reference to Cornutis’s work, published 
In 1635, with a rude woodcut, proves that his is a very dif- 
ferent plant, a native of ‘Messina, and is probably that now 
nown as C. Bivone, Guss. The plant now called variegatum, 
and which igs supposed to be the Linnzan one, is also a native 
of Greece, and is figured at Tab. 1023 of this work (copied 
and reversed in Reichenbach’s « Flora Exotice,” t. 57, without 
acknowledgment). This, Mr. Baker informs me, is a much | 
larger Species than the subject of the present plate, with less 
pronounced and coarser tessellation, and having suberect leaves 
APRIL Ist, 1874, 
