﻿Perennial. — Flowers in October. 



The root is a small, round ish,§ solid bulb, coated with the remains 

 of the sheathing bases of the leaves of the former season, and 

 sending out long scaly runners. The leaves are long, narrow, strap- 

 shaped, and smooth, with a narrow whitish stripe along the middle 

 on the upper surface ; keeled, and somewhat revolute on the under. 

 The flowers are in perfection early in October, a month or six 

 weeks before the leaves appear, from which circumstance some au- 

 thors have named this species Crocus aphyllus, the flowers being 

 perfectly destitute of leaves. The tube of the corolla is from 9 in- 

 ches to a foot long ; the limb of a fine deep purple. The stigma is 

 enclosed within the flower, it is of a deep orange colour, and its 

 segments are deeply subdivided into from 7 to 12, generally 9 r 

 nari’ow strap-shaped lobes (see fig. 3, d.). The capsule is ellipti- 

 cal, and stalked, ripening in May. 



I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. A. It. Bort, late of Chester, but now 

 of Reading, Berks, for bulbs of this species of Crocus; he dug them up in 

 a field near Wolstanton church-yard, and sent them to the Oxford Botanic 

 Garden in October, 1829, where they have annually flowered, and from one of 

 which the drawing for the accompanying plate was made. 



THE HARVEST CROCUS. 



“ When Ceres with a liberal hand 

 Her bounty deals around, 



And rural Labour’s joyful band 

 Behold their wishes crown'd ; 



When Flora’s gaudier beauties fade | 



That bore the bell in Spring, 



And Silence holds the sylvan glade 

 Where Music wont to king ; 



When swallows on the house-top meet 

 In council to prepare 

 For warmer climes, the voyage fleet 

 Through distant fields of air; 



Meek Flowret then, we greet thy birth. 



In yonder sheltered bed. 



Where smiling on the lap of earth, 



Thou lift’st thy purple head. 



Poor Orphan ! no parental leaves 

 Protect thy infant bloom, 



Thee Fortune of that boon bereaves ; 



1 hey met an early doom 1 

 Thy nakedness with pitying eye 

 The gentle Cow'slip sees, 



And spreads her verdant mantle nigh, 



To screen thee from the breeze. 



Thy vernal sister || sprang to light. 



The lengthening day to cheer, 



But thou remain’st to charm our sight, 



When Winter’s gloom draws near.” — T. Stott. 



§ Professor Burnett observes, in his Outlines of Botany, p. 450, that “ the 

 intermediate caudex of the Crocus, which is usually considered as a solid bulb, 

 is rather a rhizoma, from the bottom of which the roots p.oceed, and upon which 

 the buds are situated ; this axis neither lengthens upwards nor downwards to any 

 considerable extent, for the buds separate and the old thizotua perishes.” 



|| Crocus Vernus. 



