A HISTORY OF THE SPECIES OF CROCUS. 



267 



limbo pallide purpureo venis et laciniarum inferne attenuatarum basi 

 intus saturate purpuris, petalorum basi minute barbata sepalorum lsevi, 

 filamentis purpurascentibus laevibus ori ipsi tubi insertis, styli lobis 

 sesquiuncialibus pendulis coccineis, stigmatibus truncatis odoris an- 

 theras aureas longe superantibus, foliis subundecim subsesquipedalibus 

 erecto-recurvis marginibus et costse angulis .ciliatis, costa dorsali fortiter 

 nervata canaliculis enervibus. 



Native country uncertain. 



This plant was formerly cultivated at Saffron Walden in this 

 country, for saffron, which its style constitutes ; and I under- 

 stand that it flowers pretty freely there, the chalky district 

 being congenial to it. In my garden in Yorkshire I think it 

 has only flowered, and that very sparingly, three seasons in the 

 last 30 years, and on those occasions the summer had been 

 warmer than usually. Dr. Royle found it in cultivation in 

 Cashmere, which is beyond the eastern limits of wild Crocuses. 

 Its native place is not known. It has been called wild in the 

 Abruzzi, but is considered to have proceeded from ancient cul- 

 ture. It is said to be wild in parts of Scios, but that island 

 became a wilderness after the extermination of its inhabitants by 

 the Turks. The dry specimen which M. Mazziari of Sta. Maura 

 put in my hands, with the live bulb, last year, and which he 

 asserts that he found near the summit of Scarus, in that island, 

 where he says that it is also met with, though rare, and some- 

 times entangled with Iris stylosa, on the stony steep of the cone 

 of St. Elias, one of the highest points of Megaoros, is certainly C. 

 sativus ; and no cultivation seems likely to have been ever at- 

 tempted on such rugged and elevated points. The fact rests 

 on his authority ; though I have no reason to doubt him, I 

 cannot vouch for it personally ; and I have found him incorrect 

 as to other localities, for I have from him a specimen of a large 

 golden crocus, asserted to grow near the telegraph Palaeocastrizza, 

 where in fact no crocus is to be found, but a white and yellow 

 Trichonema, which is called by the natives, who eat the bulbs, 

 Mamalokes, a name which Mr. Mazziari has published as belong- 

 ing to C. vernus, which does not grow in the Ionian islands. 

 The family with fragrant truncate styles, to which C. sativus 

 belongs, extends eastward from Italy. Some persons have thought 

 C. sativus to have been altered by cultivation from Crocus 

 Thomasianus. I do no^ think so. Its original site may have 

 been brought into cultivation. I found Crocus Mazziaricus 

 extirpated by recent cultivation from Cana, in Sta. Maura, and 

 C. Ionicus nearly so from Diamigliano and San Pietro, where 

 three small bulbs, which I took from the sides of a few bushes, 

 were the only remnant. I suspect that the birth-place of C. 

 sativus has been long converted into vineyards. The various 



t 2 



