My Garden in Spring 



fully its colour would fight with the present mauves and 

 lilacs of its family ! 



I must not prattle of the multitude of Crocus forms 

 for which I have labels. They all possess distinctions 

 and differences for me, but in many cases are better seen 

 than read about, and even I am beginning to be alarmed 

 when I see the rows of labels sticking up in the frames 

 and seed-beds in August just after replanting. <f Looks 

 rather like a cemetery, doesn't it ? " friends mockingly ask. 

 " I don't mind," say I, " so long as it has an annual re- 

 surrection." I may be forgiven, however, for discoursing 

 of what should be everybody's Crocuses, such as Imperati 

 for the first. There are two distinct races going about 

 under the name. One is the wild plant from the country 

 round Naples, the other I have never yet traced to its 

 native home, and rather suspect it is of garden origin. 

 Herbariums appear to have only the Neapolitan fellow. 

 The two are very distinct ; the unmistakable point of dif- 

 ference is in the spathe valves, those wonderful wrappings 

 of living tissue-paper that enclose every Crocus bud in its 

 youth. There are either two or only a single one, and 

 as a rule the number of these floral spathes is a good 

 specific feature, and a whole species has either a mono- 

 phyllous or diphyllous spathe, but in Imperati all the 

 wild Neapolitan ones, so far as I can find out, have 

 diphyllous spathes, and every author who describes the 

 wild plant mentions the two spathes but makes no 

 mention of a form with a monophyllous spathe. Both 

 have the same colour-scheme, warm rosy lilac within, and 

 the outside of the three outer segments striped or feathered 

 90 



