Xix— THE WILD HYACINTH. 
Scil/a non-scripta Hoffmansegg and Link. 
I T might be expected that there would be less likelihood or doubt as to the 
proper names of the most familiar flowers ; but it is not so. Few English 
wild flowers are better known or greater favourites than the Wild Hyacinth, and 
yet there is but little agreement as to either its scientific, or its popular, or, as they 
are technically termed, its trivial, names. 
The beautiful youth Hyacinthus was, according to legend, killed by the quoit 
of Apollo jealously blown aslant by Zephyrus, and from his blood sprang a lily with 
its petals darkly spotted with the letters A I, A I, alas !, or with a Y, the initial of 
Hyacinthus. According to another story it was from the blood of Ajax that this 
flower originated. By the earlier botanists our woodland plant was placed under 
Hyacinthus. Thus William Turner, in his “ Names of Herbes ” (1548), writes : — 
“The commune Hyacinthus is muche in Englande about Syon and Shene, and it is called in Englishe crowtoes, and in 
the North partes Crawtees. Some vse the rootes for glue.” 
Gerard had in his garden in Holborn in 1596 “Hyacinthus anglicus caeruleus,” 
as well as white and reddish varieties ; and in his “ Herbal ” he mentions it as 
“ Hare-bell ” and “ Crow-leek.” 
Linnaeus retained the plant in the genus Hyacinthus and, seeing that there is no 
such sad inscription on its petals as the story relates, added the specific name non- 
scriptus. Among the distinctive characters of the genus Hyacinthus , however, are the 
union of the perianth-leaves and the presence of three nectariferous glands on 
the ovary, characters which are absent in our plant and in other members of the 
large genus Scilla. Many botanists, however, have considered the Wild Hyacinth 
to have its perianth-leaves slightly united at the base; and on this ground, or from 
the bell-like shape and reflexed points of the perianth, have erected it into a 
separate genus, which Link, in 1829, named Agraphis , the Greek equivalent of 
Limit’s non-scriptus , adding the appropriate specific name nutans , drooping. 
Dumortier had, however, previously (in 1827) proposed the generic name 
Endymion , taken from that of another beautiful youth of Greek legend. Sir 
James Smith insisted that the perianth-leaves are as distinct from one another as in 
any polyphyllous perianth, and accordingly adopted the name Scilla nutans , writing of 
the plant also under the purely invented trivial name of “ Hare-bell Squill.” As 
he, however, admits, Smith had been anticipated by his rival and quondam friend 
Richard Antony Salisbury, who had in 1796 called the plant Scilla festalis ; but, 
since, according to our present international rules, the earliest Linnsean or post- 
Linnaean specific name must be retained and a name is followed by the authority for 
its two portions taken together, this plant is Endymion non-scriptum Garcke (1849) 
for those who think it entitled to rank as a distinct genus ; but Scilla non-scripta of 
Hoffmansegg and Link’s “Flore Portugaise ” (1840) for those who do not. 
