My Garden in Spring 



it for certain from any nursery I know of, and it does not 

 come quite true from seed. 



Of yellow Crocuses the best known is the old Dutch 

 form of aureus, too well known to need description, but it 

 deserves mention as it is a very curious plant, for though 

 its anthers are larger than those of any other Crocus it 

 has a deformed, atrophied stigma, and is quite sterile, 

 never producing seeds, and has been like that for a very 

 long time, and so must have been propagated solely by 

 offsets, by vegetative instead of sexual reproduction, and 

 yet it shows no sign of deterioration, and is, I should say, 

 one of the most widely cultivated of all plants that cannot 

 be raised from seeds, for there can be but few gardens 

 that do not contain a few hundreds of the common yellow 

 Crocus. The Saffron Crocus (C. sativus) is another similar 

 case. It has been cultivated for centuries for the sake of 

 its stigmata, which being dried become the Saffron of 

 commerce, from Kashmir to the Bay of Biscay, and was 

 at one time largely grown in England at Saffron Walden. 

 But it has never produced seeds in the memory of man 

 or since he has written about it. I have a curious, dull- 

 coloured, and smaller flowered form of aureus that in 

 other respects is much like the Dutch Crocus, but does 

 produce a few seeds in favourable seasons. I cannot 

 trace its origin, but have heard rumours of a stock of 

 yellow Crocus that exists in Holland and is of an inferior 

 quality, and I suspect it is my fertile but dingy old friend. 

 The wild type of C. aureus is a very free seeder, and varies 

 a good deal in its seedlings. The best forms of it are of 

 an intense glowing orange : one I get from Mr. Smith's 

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