Spring Crocuses 



wonderful nursery at Newry under the name of moesiacus 

 (which is rightly but a synonym of aureus) is larger and 

 deeper in colour than any other orange-coloured Crocus 

 that can be grown outside. I think these deep orange 

 aureus forms grow best in slight shade such as is given 

 by some small light bush, and when they are allowed to 

 seed about and colonise are simply glorious in the rock 

 garden. 



Sometimes I get a seedling which is the form Dean 

 Herbert named lutescens and figured in the Botanical 

 Magazine, a beautiful flower of several shades, as though 

 cream were mixed with apricots, and there was more 

 cream than apricot at the edges of the segments. This 

 season I have a white seedling which is of course the old 

 named form, v. lacteus, but I hope from this year's 

 behaviour it will prove an earlier flowerer like the type, a 

 few flowers of which generally flare up before the paler 

 Dutch appears, whereas the old lacteus is the latest of all 

 the forms of aureus to pierce through, and often manages 

 to keep back a flower or two to be company for vernus 

 var. obesus and compete for the honour of being the last 

 Crocus of that Spring. Lacteus is an ivory white in 

 colour, distinct from any other, and you can see it is a 

 yellow turned white, reminding one of that beautiful 

 softened shade of white that in old age replaces red hair of 

 the shade euphemistically called auburn, but colloquially 

 carrots or ginger. 



No present-day seedlings of the orange wild aureus 

 are anything like the old Dutch variety, whose origin is 

 lost in mystery, as also is that of another section of this 

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