8 4 THE GENUS CROCUS. 



Scape half an inch (0.013 metre) high at the flowering time, and produced to a height of an inch and 

 a half (0.038 metre) at the maturity of the capsule, which it bears at the ground surface. 



Capsule about an inch (0.025 metre) in length, sharply pointed. 



Seed globose, one-tenth of an inch (0.0025 metre) in diameter, of a uniform dull buff-colour, and bearing 

 prominent chalaza, raphe, and caruncle. 



Crocus Scharojani was discovered by Herr Scharojan, a native of the Caucasus, 

 in August, 1865, at a height of eleven hundred toisen, or seven thousand feet, 

 on the north side of the watershed of the source of the river Bjeleja, near the high 

 Mount Oschen, in the district of Abadsechen, in the western Caucasus, growing 

 intermixed with C. vallicola, and was only known till recently by two of Scharojan's 

 specimens preserved in the herbarium of Dr. Nador, of Tiflis, and two others in 

 the herbarium of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science, from which latter the 

 figure in Kegel's Gartenflora was taken. 



From so remote a district, difficult of access, all efforts to introduce the plant 

 to cultivation proved fruitless, till it turned up accidentally amongst a parcel of 

 roots of C. vallicola, obligingly obtained for me from the Kroom Dagh, above 

 Stauros, near Trebizond, by Mr. Alfred Biliotti, Her Majesty's Consul at Trebizond. 

 My friend, Colonel R. Trevor Clarke, of Welton Place, near Daventry, was the first 

 to flower it, at the end of July, 1879. In the following year I again flowered it; 

 and Mr. Biliotti has since obtained for me a further supply of the roots. 



Both the Circassian and Armenian habitats are situated on longitude 40 east; 

 and the species has a range of four degrees of latitude, from 40 to 44° north. 



C. Scharojani is nearly allied to C. vallicola. The two species are the earliest of 

 the autumnal Croci: C. Scharojani commences to flower at the end of July, and early 

 in August, and is immediately succeeded by C. vallicola. The singular leaf-structure, 

 in which the keel is as broad as the blade, is common to both species, which grow 

 intermixed in the only two known habitats of C. Scharojani. The persistence of the 

 leaves of the previous year up to the autumnal flowering time has, I believe, never 

 been noticed in any other species, C. karduchorum excepted. 



REFERENCES TO PLATE HI. 



Fig. 1. Flowering-state, August 2nd, from corms collected at Stauros, actual size. 



Fig. 2. Fruiting-state, May 17th, from corms collected at Stauros, actual size. 



Fig. 3. Diagrammatic dissection of scape, ovary, and spathes, actual size. 



Fig. 4. Stamens and Pistil, magnified two-fold. 



Fig. 5. Stigmata, magnified six-fold. 



Fig. G. Pollen Grain, magnified one hundred and fifty-fold. 



Fig. 7. Leaf-section, magnified six-fold. 



Fig. 8. Corm tunic, magnified two-fold. 



Fig. 9. Seed, magnified six-fold. 



