Numerous Early Comers 



belong to seedlings. They appear above-ground folded in 

 two like a butterfly with closed wings, and soon after them 

 come the buds. I was greatly pleased with a form I got 

 from Holland in the autumn. It is called var. roseum, and 

 is a pretty pale pink and marvellously floriferous. I used 

 to have a fine plant of a pure white form, but it died and 

 I cannot get another as good, all I have bought lately 

 for white being nothing but a faded or overworn pink as 

 the sixteenth century gardeners call it. The bright, rosy 

 type form is very good, and carries on the season until 

 C. europaeum, the sweetly-scented gem from Italian woods 

 and Tyrolean hillsides, begins to flower. It does so about 

 the end of May here, and goes on until September is 

 middle-aged and the truly autumnal forms are in full swing. 

 The largest flowerer of the hardy forms is C. libanoticum, 

 unfortunately rare, rather expensive, and none too easy to 

 grow. The happiest I possess are on a burnt-up dry 

 slope of rock garden overhung by an old thorn ; the soil is 

 dry as dust all the summer, and I suppose the slopes of 

 Lebanon are not very different at that season, and so it 

 feels at home where nothing else but a few Sempervivums 

 exist for long together. 



I am very fond of the Spring-flowering Colchicums, but 

 unfortunately slugs are also, and those greedy gasteropods 

 and I have a race for who can see the flower-buds first. 

 If I win I go out after dark with an acetylene lamp and a 

 hatpin and spear the little army of slugs making for the 

 tea-party at the sign of the Colchicum. C, hydrophilum and 

 libanoticum are two closely-related eastern species ; the 

 former from the Taurus has the more richly-coloured 

 flowers, and the Lebanon one the larger and better shaped. 

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