CROCUS. 
Pentstemons, Hrinacea, Genista horrida, and many more of medium 
height and habit not too dense, take an added charm when their own 
flowers are over, if up amid their twigs come shooting the violet and 
lavender cups of Crocus, as Crocus versicolor peers amid the withered 
herbage and low tangles of lentisc and Smilax on the Cap d’Antibes 
down by the Mediterranean in mid-winter. In the way of soil, too, 
Crocus makes no demands; their ground should be open and light, as 
that necessary to the best culture of all alpines; nor are they less rigid 
than other plants in their insistence upon good drainage. But then 
this point is understood ; any book that talks nowadays of the culture 
of alpines takes it for granted that the whole construction is on sound 
lines from the beginning, with adequate foundation of drainage-blocks 
below, and the soil prepared throughout instead of merely being ad- 
ministered in those pernicious ‘“ pockets”’ that got alpines’so miffy a 
name in days gone by, and slew their hundreds of thousands to the 
tens that fell victim to slug or mouse or climate. Mice, indeed, are 
vampires of Crocus, and the gardener troubled with such must let loose 
a leash of cats at once, if he does not wish to go round each morning 
and see a fresh little neat set of holes (exactly as if the ferule of an 
umbrella had been poked down), in every one of which lies the wreckage 
of some expensive Crocus, there discovered and devoured. No pre- 
caution otherwise appears to prevail ; if Crown Imperials are planted 
no good is done, though it was once hoped that the smell of their 
bulbs might drive away the mice from the Crocus corms ; which they 
pursue from above ground (without burrowing as they do for lilies), 
aided by some special sense like that of truffle-dogs pursuing their 
prey in the woods of France. Even red lead seems only to act as 
an appetiser ; often will you find the red-leaded latticed skeleton of 
the corm’s tunic lying complete and perfectly empty, like the ghost of 
a Japanese lantern; but of the lovely promise within no longer any 
trace. The remedy is only poison, or cats, or traps, baited with 
common Crocus-corms ; and the building of the rock-garden so soundly 
throughout that there are no hollows left for mice to make their homes. 
Here, then, isa complete list of all the Crocus species that are best suited 
for out-door culture in England, the arrangement being on the botanical 
principle, most simple in a race like this. Let these be planted at 
half again their own depth—or say some 2 or 3 inches, and the 
corms will give you news again of beauty when most you want it 
in the sere hours of the year, springing perhaps in the same sheet 
of Acaena, filled with C. Imperati for the dawn, and C. speciosus 
for the weeping sunset of the season. 
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