114 FLOWERS OF THE WOODS AND COPSES 
The capsule contains few seeds, which fall when ripe around the 
parent plant, but it also multiplies largely by bulbs. 
The Snowdrop is a sand-loving or clay-loving plant growing in 
sand or clay with some little humus. 
The Snowdrop mildew (Scéerotenza galanthina) attacks it. 
Galanthus, Linnzus, is from Greek ga/a, milk, axthos, flower, from 
the milk-white flower, and the second Latin name (from zzvzs, snow) 
refers to the period of flowering, in winter, when snow is on the ground. 
This plant is called Candlemas Bells, Fair Maids, Fair Maids of 
February, French Snowdrop, Purification Flower, Snowdrop, Snow- 
flower, White Ladies. Ouida calls it White Ladies in S¢vathmore. 
The Snowdrop is called Fair Maids of February on account of its 
flowering in. February. 
Legend has accumulated around so familiar a flower. Formerly 
young women dressed in white and walked in procession on the 
Feast of Purification, saying: 
“The snowdrop in purest white array, 
First rears her head on Candlemas Day”. 
It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary—the monks thought it bloomed 
at this period in memory of the Virgin when she took the child 
Jesus to the Temple and presented her offering, and because her 
image was removed from the altar on the Feast of Purification and 
snowdrops were strewed in its place. It is considered unlucky to bring 
the first snowdrop of the year into a house, for ‘it looks for all the 
world like a corpse in its shroud”. 
There is a beautiful legend that ‘An angel was sent to console 
Eve mourning over the barren earth. No flower grew in Eden, and 
driving snow kept falling and making a pall for Earth’s funeral after 
the fall. As the angel spoke, he caught a flake of falling snow, 
breathed on it, and bade it take a form, and bud and blow. Ere it 
reached the ground it had turned into a beautiful flower which Eve 
prized more than all the other fair plants of Paradise. The angel 
said: 
‘This is an earnest, Eve, to thee, 
That Sun and Summer soon shall be’. 
The angel departed, and a ring of snowdrops formed a lovely posy 
where he stood.” 
EssENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS :— 
298. Galanthus nivalis, L.—Leaves linear, keeled, flowers white, 
single, drooping, inner segments green, sepals exceeding the petals. 
