﻿Perennial. — Flowers in April. 



Bulb small, egg-shaped, brown on the outside. Leaves many, 

 growing immediately from the bulb, deep green, flaccid, and loosely 

 spreading ; strap-shaped, very narrow, about 9 inches or a foot 

 long; channelled on the upper side ; semi-cylindrical on the lower. 

 Scape f stalk J solitary, upright, cylindrical, shorter than the leaves, 

 often brownish, terminated by a close, upright cluster of numerous, 

 drooping, dark blue flowers, which are imbricated (tiled) down- 

 wards, each on a short, slender pedicle, accompanied by a minute 

 bractea at its base. Corolla small ; tube oblong, ventricose (dis- 

 tended in the middle) ; limb cut into 6 minute, spreading, white 

 teeth. Capsule with 3 rounded lobes. Seeds 2 in each cell. The 

 flowers smell like wet starch ; many of the uppermost of them are 

 pale, diminutive, and imperfect. 



This plant is a native of the South of Europe. Dr. Martyn 

 informs us that he gathered it in flower, near Geneva, on the 8th 

 of April, 1779. It was cultivated by Gerarde in 1596; he calls 

 it Blew Grape-flower ; and Parkinson, in his Paradisi in Soli, 

 1629, calls it the Dark Blew Grape-flower. In that very useful 

 work, “ The Botanist’s Guide through England and Wales, by 

 Dawson Turner, Esq. F. R. S., &c. ; and L. W.Dillwyn, Esq. 

 F. R. S., &c.” this plant is first recorded as a native of Britain, on 

 the authority of Sir T. G. Cullum, who found it plentifully in the 

 habitats above mentioned, and considers it “at least equally entitled 

 to a place in the British Flora as Tulipa sylvestris (t. 2.), and many 

 other naturalized species.” 



