SNOWDROPS. 
31 
The tall and early-flowering form of the Snowdrop from Southern 
Italy is known as G. Imperati. The flowers figured (fig. 5) were 
grown in Canon Ellacombe's wonderful garden at Bitton, where 
the long line of this fine variety under the south wall was always 
a beautiful sight in January. 
There are several forms of Imperati in cultivation, but this one, 
which I believe was distributed originally by Atkins of Painswick, and 
is called var. Atkinsii, is the finest of them. Tall, with a beautifully 
long bud and a large spot of light green and one of the earliest to flower, 
it is a very precious plant. A somewhat similar form was distributed 
by Backhouse of York some years ago, but differs in a tiresome habit 
of seldom producing a perfectly formed flower. Either they have 
an extra segment, or one of the inner ones is longer than the others, 
or, again, a petaloid white bract may appear just below the ovary. 
The large size of the green markings, and the slightly rolled edges of 
the young leaves, suggest that these large Imperati forms are of hybrid 
origin, and that plicatus, the Crimean Snowdrop, is one of their parents. 
The Straffan Snowdrop, G. caucasicus grandis, is to my taste the 
most beautiful of all forms. The flowers are rounder and shorter, and, 
I think, better proportioned than in Imperati. 
The drawing (fig. 6) was made from flowers sent to me for the 
purpose by Mr. Bedford, for many years the head gardener at Straffan, 
in County Kildare. There is a mystery as to the origin of this fine 
form. Mr. Bedford has lately said he believes it to be a seedling 
form. The late Mr. Burbidge greatly admired the plant as grown at 
Straffan, and considered it a form of caucasicus, brought by Lord 
Clarina in 1856 from the valley of Tchernaya in the Crimea, among 
bulbs of G. plicatus. Anyway, Mr. Bedford was the first to notice 
it in 1858, when two flowers superior to their neighbours caught 
his eye. 
All those now in existence were raised from that one bulb, and 
though it increases well by offsets it does not perfect seed. Notice 
the way in which each bulb, when strong, produces a second flower 
between the pair of leaves. This is very characteristic of the Crimean 
Snowdrops, and most of the seedling forms with caucasicus or plicatus 
in their parentage inherit this pleasing habit. Another virtue of this 
plant is that it comes into flower rather late, and when Imperati is over. 
' Allen's Seedling ' (fig. 7) is a particularly graceful form, con- 
sidering the great size of the flower. It reminds one of ' Magnet ' in 
the length of the flower-stalk ; but the size of the green markings and 
slightly rolled edges of the leaves point to plicatus as one parent and 
Melvillei might be the other, from which the width of the outer 
segments has been derived. Such a beautiful plant as this should 
encourage others to raise seedlings from the best types available. 
G. nivalis ' Galatea ' (fig. 8) is another of Mr. Allen's seedlings. 
In his paper on ' Snowdrops/ read at the Snowdrop Conference held by 
the R.H.S. (see Journal R.H.S., vol. xiii. p. 174), he wrote : 
" This too is one of the giants of the family as to size of flower, 
