Part II. LEUCOJUM. 239 



should be called the Summer Snowflake. From a dense crowd 

 of daffodil-like leaves, more than a, foot long, the flower-stems, 

 from a foot to eighteen inches high, spring, bearing at the apex 

 a cluster of snowdrop-like, slightly drooping, blooms. The flower 

 is of pure sparkling white, springing from a very dark smooth 

 green seed-vessel, and the tip of each petal being of a pleasing 

 soft green, both inside and out, the effect is very pretty. It is 

 a meadow plant, a native of some parts of England, and seems 

 to be at home in every kind of garden soil. It is particularly 

 weU suited for naturalisation in spots where the Daffodil thrives, 

 and by the sides of wood walks, where mowing is not resorted 

 to, and is well worthy of a place in the mixed border, or on 

 the margins of shrubberies. Though it occurs in the British 

 Flora, it is found in only a few places in England. Readily 

 propagated by division. 



Mr. Syme says in ' English Botany ' : " Z. astivum, in its 

 typical form, is less often met with in cultivation than its sub- 

 species, L. Hernandezii, a native of Southern Europe, which 

 often does duty for L. astivum in botanic gardens, and is sold 

 by seedsmen under the name of L. pulchellum. This form 

 flowers from three weeks to a month earlier than L. astivum, 

 and has the flowers smaller, little more than half an inch long, 

 the perianth segments more incurved, so that the perianth is 

 somewhat ovoid, and after flowering urceolate." 



LEUCOJUM Vl^nwaM.— Spring Snowflake. 



A DWARF, stout, broad-leaved plant, like a Galanthus, but with 

 larger and handsomer flowers, and appearing about a month 

 later than the Snowdrop ; dehciously fragrant ; the segments 

 white, an inch long, and each distinctly marked with a green or 

 yellowish spot near the point, drooping and usually produced 

 singly on stems from four to six inches high. It is certainly 

 more worthy of cultivation than the Snowdrop, and that is as 

 high praise as we can give to any dwarf spring-flowering plant. 

 It has long been known as a continental plant, and was valued 

 and grown in our gardens when hardy flowers were more esteemed 

 than they are at present ; but, singularly enough, its existence, as 

 a true native, was not known, with certainty, tiU a year or two 

 ago, when it was found, in abundance, on the " Greenstone 

 heights, in the neighbourhood of Britford." It is not by any 



