I90 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Their only enemies are field mice and pheasants. Both plants produce 
seed freely and multiply by the formation of so many small corms 
that so long as their foliage is allowed to remain until it becomes 
brown (about the end of April) permanence and increase are assured. 
The only attention they require is an occasional replanting when 
they become too thick. The one brightens the garden in the early 
spring, the other tones the browns and reds and yellows of the dying 
year. 
Crocus Tomasinianus flowers, as a rule, just before most forms 
of C. vernus, and about the same time as the old Dutch yellow Crocus. 
It has a slender grace that most of the Dutch forms of C. vernus lack, 
and is, when open, of a clear and delicate colour, described by Maw as 
sapphire-lavender and by Bowles as amethystine- violet. No Dutch 
crocus, except the one I hold the most beautiful of all, ' Margot,' 
is so tender and pleasing in shade. When closed the flowers of 
most forms are of various shades of grey. 
Crocus Tomasinianus is a variable plant, especially, perhaps, in 
the colour of the buds, but there is a deep purple variety, a pure white, 
and a particularly pleasing one called ' pictus/ with flowers marked 
at the tips with a darker blotch, below an apical white spot. 
This beautiful species does well in many places at Wisley, in the 
open and in the light shade of shrubs and trees, but does not prove 
quite so happy as many in the grass. Its best place is on the higher 
parts of the rock garden, where it may seed down and gladden the 
early days of dull February with drifts of lavender- violet, which will 
not interfere in the least with the flowers that are to follow after. 
It should be planted in August or September, and seed should be 
sown in the open as soon as ripe, to germinate with the growth of the 
corms in the spring. 
Crocus speciosus flowers in September and October, and is the most 
reliable and showy of all the autumn-flowering species, unless it be 
C. nudiflorus, great drifts of which form one of the beautiful autumn 
features of Wisley, and which, though so abundant in its easily acces- 
sible native home, is scarcely known in the nurserymen's catalogues. 
C. speciosus should be planted in July. It will grow in short 
grass, where, as at Wisley, it may be left alone for years, and every 
year will give stretches of blue among the green of the grass and the 
brown of the falling leaves, without any further care. It will grow 
under light shade and in the open, and is proper for the herbaceous 
border and the lighter shrubbery, the grassy bank, the rock garden, 
the edge of the wide woodland walk, and the field garden. A strong 
and vigorous flower, it is calculated to withstand all reasonable 
buffetings of autumn. 
In its typical form it is beautifully pencilled with blue on a pale 
lilac ground, but varies much in colour and size, and numbers of names 
have been given to more or less distinct forms, the most remarkable 
of which are the variety Aitchisonii, the giant of the species, and 
flowering later than the type, collected by Mr. H. J. Elwes in the- 
