136 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



October, 1907 



Chionodoxa Sardensis, a charming little darK blue 

 flower, about one-half inch across. Several on a 

 stem. All the flowers here pictured were in bloom 

 amid the heavy snowstorm of last April 



times has eight or ten flowers on a stem. It 

 is correspondingly prettier and costlier. 

 Scilla bijolia is more of a purplish blue and 

 has the great interest of blooming a fort- 

 night or so before the common scilla. It 

 did not do so, however, last spring. 



GLORY-OF-THE-SNOW 



It is a shame that these charming little 

 blue flowers do not have short, easy dis- 

 tinctive names, for everybody who sees the 

 four different kinds wants to talk about them 

 and one might as well try to converse in 

 Russian. Moreover, I defy any human being 

 to tell which species he likes best or which 

 he could live without, chionodoxas or scillas. 

 When you are looking at the sky-blue flower 

 with the white eye, you vote for Chionodoxa 

 LiicilicE, until you see a larger flower of the 

 same kind which is its variety, gigantea. 

 Then you turn to a rather dark blue flower, 

 all of one color, smaller, but more of them on a 

 stem and your heart goes out to C. Sardensis. 

 Finally, just as these are beginning to fade, 

 a new one springs into life which is like the 

 first kind. Of course, you have to have that 

 also and its dreadful name is Chionodoxa 

 Tmohisi, which is generally spelled in any 

 way but the right one — and small wonder. 



A good way to compromise is to begin with 

 a hundred of each. They cost only a cent 

 or a cent-and-a-half each at this rate. And 

 when you have seen them once you can 

 never get enough of them. If you cannot 

 afford to pay $8 to $12 a thousand for them 

 and are willing to wait five years and potter 

 with seedlings you can perhaps raise that 

 number from seed by starting with a hundred 

 bulbs. A friend at Montclair, N. J., who 

 grows them in tulip beds tells me that they 

 produce seed rather freely and apparently 

 self-sow. I should not expect them to do 

 this in grass, and indeed I do not believe 



any of the March-blooming bulbs will 

 multiply in a good lawn. My experience is 

 that they increase satisfactorily in the garden, 

 but run out in about three years when 

 planted in the lawn. But the effect is so 

 charming and the bulbs so cheap that most 

 people are willing to put in a few hundred 

 every autumn. 



THE GRECIAN WINDFLOWER 



I am sorry to say that the Grecian wind- 

 flower {Anemone blanda) proved a total 

 failure, but any one who has seen the ravish- 

 ing effect which these starry blue flowers 

 make in English woods before the trees leaf 

 out will never be content until he has suc- 

 ceeded in carpeting a good piece of ground 

 with this precious flower. One glance at 

 the colored plate in Mrs. Waterfield's 

 "Garden Colour" which depicts such a 

 success is enough to make one an enthusiast 

 for life. 



I fear that we Americans must always 



The Armenian fritil- Scilla. Sibirica, the best 



lary, in red and yellow, blue flower for scattering 



Probably to be regarded in the lawn. Flowers 



as an April bloomer one-half inch across 



look to scillas and chionodoxas as the surest 

 means of painting lawns and woods with 

 patches of blue in March, but perhaps we 

 may attain this starry blue effect by using 

 Anemone Robinsoniona, which I am told will 

 be offered in quantity for the first time in 

 America this fall. In his review of blue 

 flowers for the wild garden the editor of 

 "Flora and Sylva" gives the palm to this 

 anemone, which is supposed to be a sky- 

 blue variety of our common native wood 

 anemone (A. nemorosa) and therefore hardier 

 than the Grecian windflower. 



THE ARMENIAN FRITILLARIAS 



Fritillaria Armena proved disappointing, 

 blooming in late April or May. Neither 

 the red nor the yellow form were bright 

 enough. The gem of this genus is Fritil- 

 laria recurva, a charming Californian wild- 

 flnwer which I never expected to see in 

 general cultivation as none of the native 



Californian bulbs are great successes in 

 our Eastern states. I shall never forget the 

 thrill of delight with which I saw its colored 

 portrait in the Botanical Magazine and read 

 the assurance that it is entirely free from 

 the detestable dull purple and sickening 

 green that arc the dominant colors in this 

 genus — always excepting the gorgeous crown 

 imperial, which belongs in a radically 

 different subgenus. 



Indeed Frilillaria recurva has the brilliancy 

 of a tulip, combined with a modest, pendu- 

 lous habit. It grows a foot and a half or 

 two feet high and bears from two to eight 

 bell-shaped flowers perhaps two inches or 

 more across. The outside is bright red; 

 the inside bright yellow, spotted with orange 

 in the throat. 



I got another thrill when I found this 

 fritillary quoted at last in one of the three 

 best American bulb catalogues. Two years 

 ago the price was down to fifty cents a dozen 

 or $3 per hundred. They are worth trying 

 in small quantities at any price. 



All of the pictures that illustrate this ar- 

 ticle were taken at Highland Park, Rochester, 

 N. Y., where the bulbs were planted by 

 Mr. John Dunbar. The position is a try- 

 ing one, on a hilltop, exposed to searching 

 winds. We have pictures of these flowers 

 blooming amid the snow, but they are not 

 published because these small white and 

 blue flowers do not stand out against a white 

 background in a photograph. We do not 

 claim that they will push right up through 

 a snowbank or that the bulbs will last more 

 than two or three years in a lawn. 



The interest in winter flowers is growing 

 rapidly and a number of new and rare 

 kinds will be offered this fall in America, 

 e. g., Adonis Amurensis, Petasites vulgaris, 

 and jragrans, and many species of Crocus, 

 Galanthus, Leucojum, and Muscari. We still 

 believe that the Christmas rose is the most 

 reliable. 



Chionodoxa Luciliae, sKy A double snowdrop, 



blue, with a white eye. Doubling here seems to 



About three-quarters of add a new interest with- 



an inch across outdestroy ing its wildness 



