Spring Crocuses 



as invariably happens when they are sown in parallel lines 

 in open ground. Also Crocus seedlings have a habit of 

 descending about an inch each season, and not always 

 perpendicularly. Their method of obtaining what Maud's 

 young man desired in his delirium is curious and worth 

 noting. 



They bury themselves deeper by forming a peculiar 

 outgrowth called a starch root, which is a semi-transparent, 

 fleshy affair, something like the storage root of an 

 Alstroemeria, and at first serves the same purpose of con- 

 taining a store of nutriment, but there the similarity ends, 

 for Alstroemerias retain these storage roots throughout 

 their resting period, whereas a Crocus at the ripening-off 

 season loses its starch root, its store of starch being 

 absorbed into the newly-formed corm. The starch root 

 withers and contracts in a series of corrugations after the 

 manner of closing of a concertina, and as its long lower end 

 is firmly fixed in the soil the corm is pulled down lower 

 into the space formerly occupied by the once plump 

 starch root, which has now grown as lean as the soup-hating 

 Augustus of the Struwwelpeter. It frequently happens 

 that one of these roots grows out from one side of the 

 corm, and will then cause an oblique descent, and in two 

 seasons carry a corm more than an inch out of the line 

 in which it was planted. 



So that what with worms and starch roots it is 

 necessary either to leave a wide space between each row 

 of seedlings or to place buried slates between them to 

 prevent the different stocks becoming hopelessly mixed. 

 Slates are costly and space is precious, for I hate a vacuum 

 63 



