Spring Crocuses 



ites quite sterile. Many smaller wild forms come from 

 Italy, especially from round Florence, where they have a 

 pale lilac ground-colouring, and vary into the pretty form 

 estriatus, which has no stripes on the external buff of the 

 outer segments. This, as a hardy, dainty, and early flower- 

 ing form, should be in every rock garden and sunny 

 border where tiny bulbous things have a chance. "Crocuses 

 everywhere " is my motto here, and the lower shelving 

 slopes of the rock garden make splendid homes for the 

 rarer gems, but even there they must fit in with herbaceous 

 plants such as (Enothera speciosa, Veronica filifolia, &c., which 

 cover the ground after the Crocuses have finished with it. 

 And here you will find the forms of aerius, which one 

 would say was a blue counterpart of chrysanthus from 

 its round shape and narrow leaves, but below ground 

 it has a thin jacket instead of the hard, shell-like covering 

 of chrysanthus. Some of its forms have rich outer mark- 

 ings as nearly crimson as one can hope for in a Crocus, 

 and its variety,major,is one of the finest of all lilac Crocuses, 

 almost deserving to be called blue. There is no real blue 

 one so far as 1 know, the nearest approach to it being a 

 quaint, rather ill-tempered midget Messrs. Barr imported 

 as C. tauri, but not a bit like the great tall thing Maw 

 figured under the name a'nd pronounced to be more 

 robust than any Eastern form of biflorus. The autumnal 

 C. speciosus is in some forms nearly blue, but in many 

 forms of biflorus there is a spot or line or two of real 

 Prussian blue at the base of the inner segments, and if 

 only it could be persuaded to spread over the segments 

 we might have a turquoise-blue Crocus. How dread- 

 89 



