BOOK XXI. XI. 23-xiii. 26 



springs up among shrubs. Without perfume and 

 without the yellow anthers in the centre, it resembles 

 tlie Hly only in colour, being as it were a first attempt 

 by Nature when she was learning to produce lilies. 

 White lilies are propagated by all the means that 

 roses are ; " more than this, by a peculiar tear-like 

 gum of its own, as is also horse-parsley. No plant is 

 more prolific, a single root often sending out fifty 

 bulbs. There is also a red lily that the Greeks call 

 erinon,'' some calling its blossom the dog-rose.'^ The 

 most esteemed kind grows at Antioch and at Lao- 

 dicea in Syria, next to them comes that of Phaselis. 

 The fourth place is held by the kind growing in Italy. 



XII. There is also a bright-red lily,'' having some- 

 times a double stem, and ditfering from other lilies 

 only in having a fleshier root and a larger bulb, and 

 that undivided. It is called the narcissus. Another 

 variety of it has a white flower and a reddish 

 bud. There is this further difference between the 

 ordinary lily and the narcissus, that the leaves of 

 the latter grow straight out of the root. The most 

 popular sort is found on the mountains of Lycia. 

 A third kind has all its characteristics the same as 

 those of the other kinds, except that the cup '^ is 

 light green. AU the narcissi blossom late, for the 

 flower comes after the rising of Arcturus/ and durinsr 

 the autumnal equinox. 



XIII. In lily-culture a strange means of dyeing 

 the blooms has been invented by the wit of man. 

 For in the month of July drying stems of the Uly 



' It seems doubtful whether PHny means here by calix the 

 calyx or the corolla. If the former, the lightness of the 

 green is the point of the sentence. 



•^ Arcturus has its rising according to PUny (II. § 124) 

 eleven days before the autumnal equinox. 



179 



