CHAP, vm] CROCUSES. 241 



or in pots or boxes, with very little injury, if 

 planted in the open ground as soon as they 

 have done flowering, and suffered to mature 

 their leaves. In all cases the leaves of the 

 crocus should be suffered to remain till they 

 wither, and not cut off; though many gar- 

 deners, from a mistaken desire for neatness, cut 

 the leaves off as soon as the flowers have faded, 

 and thus seriously injure the conns. All the 

 kinds of Gladiolus, or corn flag, the bulbous 

 Irises, the Ixias, and, in short, most of the 

 Cape bulbs, are conns, and require the same 

 treatment as the crocus. The finer kinds are 

 generally orown in pots, and are kept in a frame, 

 piuno-ed in a slight hotbed during winter ; and, 

 when planted in the open ground, some gar- 

 deners take them up every year. This is, how- 

 ever, bv no means necessary, as the late 

 Honourable and Reverend William Herbert, to 

 whom the floricultural world owes so much, 

 had o-ladioli in the open ground, in his garden 

 at Spofforth, in Yorkshire, which had stood 

 there undisturbed "above twenty years, with 

 the precaution of covering them with leaves 

 from November to March or April." Dr. 

 Herbert found that " they succeeded best when 

 grown into a thick tuft, in which state the pro- 

 fusion of blossom was admirable, the cluster of 

 bulbs and the old skins of the decayed bulbs 

 permitting the wet to drain away, and prevent- 

 ing the earth from lying too close and heavy 

 oil the bulbs in autumn and winter." Dr. 

 Herbert adds, "that there is danger in disturb- 

 ing and parting them, for numbers will rot if 

 reset separately ; and if they must be divided, 



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