AMARYLLIS FAMILY 



Given six or eight bulbs, planted in a dish sufficiently deep to 

 allow coarse gravel or pebbles to be packed about them so as to 

 hold them in place, the bulbs well supplied with water and kept 

 in a dark, cool place until abundant roots are produced — this is 

 all that is necessary for success. By the time that a heavy mat 

 of roots has been formed, the leaves have started. At this stage 

 the dish of bulbs should be brought into abundant light. It is 

 best in steam-heated rooms to place the plants at the coldest win- 

 dow; they are lovers of cold, not of warmth, and too great heat 

 blasts the buds; sixty to sixty-five degrees is a good temperature. 

 Most living rooms are too warm for them; and unless a cold niche 

 can be found the bloom may prove unsatisfactory. But with an 

 agreeable temperature and plenty of sunlight the plants will bloom 

 delightfully, filling the room with delicious fragrance. Nearly 

 two weeks elapse between the appearance of the first and the last 

 blossoms of an ordinary cluster, and as the clusters do not all come 

 forth at the same time there is a long flowering period. Though 

 the flower looks delicate, as a matter of fact the texture of the 

 petals is almost leathery. 



Narcissus tazelta, the primitive type from which the garden 

 forms of clustered Narcissi are derived, is a species remarkable for 

 its variability as well as for its geographical distribution. Its 

 range extends from Portugal through southern Europe and north- 

 em Africa to Syria, Persia, Cashmere, India, on to China and 

 Japan. It is very rare to find a tropical plant that so nearly en- 

 circles the globe. The Paper White in some respects well repre- 

 sents the type, yet the primitive blossom is white with a lemon- 

 yellow corona, and in this respect the Chinese Sacred Lily more 

 nearly represents it. 



Notwithstanding all that has been said about red and purple, 

 since the matter is undecided one may be permitted to believe 

 that this primitive form is the ancient Narcissus, the flower of 

 Mohammed's devotion, "wondrously glittering," whose "sweet 

 scent caused all the broad heavens above and all the earth to 

 laugh, and the salt waves of the sea." * "Fed by heavenly dews 



' " Homeric Hymn to Demeter." 



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