All the Winter Crocuses Worth Growing—By Wilhelm Miller, 
New 
York 
WHY NOT HAVE A THREE-DOLLAR COLDFRAME AND ENJOY THESE CHARMING FLOWERS EVERY 
DAY FROM SEPTEMBER TO MARCH? 
[Epitor’s Norte. 
that the limitations of any plant should be politely ignored. 
CAN 
THEY BE GROWN SOUTH LIKE WILDFLOWERS? 
This 1s the twenty-second of those heretical “ Little Monographs” which fight the old notion that the garden value of plants is wholly a matter of taste, and 
We maintain that the comparative method, which is th2 life-blood of science, must be introduced into gardening; that its 
abject 4s to discover which plants are the best for each particular purpose; and that we can never overcome the defects of any gard2n plant until they are honestly stated.| 
VERYBODY knows the common 
crocuses, which are the first showy 
garden flowers of spring, but most people 
do not know that there are also autumn and 
winter-blooming crocuses. I want you to 
make a sharp distinction in your mind 
between the autumn and winter species 
because anyone can afford to grow the 
former, whereas those that bloom in mid- 
winter are only for experiment. 
There are only nine species, outside the 
regular spring bloomers, that are cheap 
enough to be planted in the lawns or gardens 
by the thousand and these I have described 
in the Christmas number of Country Life 
in America. My present object is to show 
why. anyone should spend his hard-earned 
money for the higher-priced kinds. 
This is very easy. The cheap kinds 
mostly bloom in September or February. 
Between those months comes the rub. 
The winter crocuses offer two opportunities: 
They will bloom outdoors in the South from 
November to February, and it is possible 
that they may prove to be the most interest- 
ing and valuable flowers in the Middle 
South during the long period when there are 
practically no other flowers. 
In the North, winter crocuses make an 
excellent coldframe hobby for lovers of 
rare and interesting flowers. Now that 
we have these little portable frames (about 
two feet square) you can have a collection 
of thirty species (Say a dozen bulbs of each) 
which will give you flowers practically 
every day from September to March inclu- 
sive. On sunny days you can put the 
frames in the cellar and your friends will be 
surprised to see flowers coming right through 
frozen ground and even snow. For the 
coldframes do not furnish any heat. Their 
object is to protect these lovely flowers, 
after they have come up, from _ being 
spattered with dirt. Also, on days of 
feeble sunlight the flowers may open under 
glass, whereas outside they would remain 
closed. 
The first amateur who made a great 
hobby of winter crocuses was Mr. Maw, 
whose glorious ‘“ Monograph of the Genus 
Crocus” I gloated over last winter while my 
crocuses were blooming just outside my 
dining-room window. 
What a fine thing it would be if some 
American gentleman of leisure would take 
up any genus of plants in the same spirit as 
Mr. Maw! England is the only country, 
according to Hugo Munsterberg, in which 
important contributions to knowledge are 
commonly made by amateurs outside of 
university circles. 
Consider the pleasure Mr. Maw had. 
His genus is confined to the Mediterranean 
region. Think of mountain climbing in 
the Holy Land and of scouring Italy and 
Greece for its most precious spring flowers! 
The search for type specimens took him 
to every important botanical garden and 
The largest of all the autumn blooming crocuses, sometimes six inches across! 
feathered flower of September. 
Aitchison’s crocus, a 
(Crocus speciosus, var. Aitchisonic) 
928 
herbarium in Europe. It gave him a chance 
to refresh his Latin, French, and German. 
He drew and colored every one of his seventy 
plates, with their full botanical details and 
made a beautiful map that shows at a glance 
just where each species grows wild. He 
grew every one of these pretty flowers at 
home. Yet the whole work took only 
what leisure a business man could spare 
for the purpose during eight years! 
His “Monograph of the Genus Crocus” 
is a joy to handle and insures him a delight- 
ful immortality, for even when it is hopelessly 
out of date it will make everyone’s eyes 
light up with pleasure. Yet so little are 
such things esteemed in America that I could 
not find a copy in the richest city of our. 
country and I gratefully record my indebted- 
ness to Dr. William Trelease of the Missouri 
Botanical Garden for the privilege of study- 
ing it for a fortnight. 
There are two well marked color groups in 
the genus Crocus—the yellow and the 
purple. To the purple series belong the 
lilac, rose, and white, any of which is easily 
derived from the purple. But no species 
of the purple group has a yellow variety and 
vice versa. It is the fashion to call the 
yellow crocuses “orange,” but I have seen 
no justification for this. 
There are also two important kinds of 
markings — “feathered” and “suffused.” 
The feathered crocuses have the branching 
veins of the petals outlined in purple or some 
derivative of that color. This is the type 
with which everybody is familiar. among 
the spring-blooming crocuses. But the 
yellow species are often suffused with bronze 
— quite a different color from any in the 
purple series. Some of the purples also are 
suffused with a secondary color and it is a 
very agreeable change from the dominant 
type. In either case, the secondary color 
is nearly always confined to the outer sur- 
faces of the three outer petals. Whenever 
any variation occurs I will mention it, as 
it is rare enough to be a specific character 
and always adds considerably to the interest. 
CHOICE PURPLE CROCUSES 
There are four crocuses that begin to 
bloom in October and ought to continue 
well into November. 
The cheapest is C. Asturicus, which 
might be called the “variable Spanish 
crocus,’ because it is hard to find two 
flowers just alike even in its habitat. The 
other important species of which this is 
true are the common spring-blooming cro- 
cuses (C. vernus and C. versicolor). This 
Spanish crocus is generally violet or purple, 
and may be feathered or not. A dark 
purple variety seems to be the most 
