26 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



I must pass by the hepaticas, though they may take 

 rank among the earliest spring flowers. I would only 

 advise that they should never be disturbed they dis- 

 like removal and division. All the sorts are worth 

 growing, and easily grown, single and double red, 

 single and double blue (the double blue much resenting 

 any interference), and the single white. There is a 

 double white on record, but I never saw it, and have 

 been told by a good botanist that it is the autumnal 

 form of the single red. This, if true, and my in- 

 formant was a very accurate man, is curious ; but there 

 are two distinct forms of the single white, one with 

 red and the other with white anthers, and there is a 

 large blue Hepatica from Greece, H. angulosa, which 

 in some gardens is very beautiful, but will not grow 

 everywhere. 



I might well leave the daffodils for the March record, 

 for they are flowers of March rather than of February, 

 but there is one, the earliest of all, which comes into 

 flower in the beginning of February, and seldom lasts 

 into March. This is the Narcissus minimus, a beautiful 

 little plant with the small flowers almost prostrate, 

 and undoubtedly only a variety of the common pseudo- 

 narcissus, but sufficiently distinguished both by the size 

 and time of flowering. It is a curious fact that these 

 varieties succeed one another according to their size. 



