THE WILD HYACINTH— continued. 
It is characteristic of the large genus Scilla (the name of which comes down 
from Dioscorides, and which comprises some eighty species, all natives of the 
Temperate regions of the Old World) to have a roundish bulb, linear, radical leaves, 
and slender filaments about half as long as the perianth-leaves and attached to them 
at the base. This particular species is distinguished by its drooping raceme of 
blossoms, the two bracts below each flower, the bell-shaped perianth with its 
reflexed tips, and the union between stamen and perianth- leaf extending half-way up 
the latter. It is distinctively a plant of Western Central Europe, not occurring 
wild in Switzerland, Italy, Eastern Germany, or Scandinavia. 
While few things are more beautiful than our May woodlands carpeted with 
what has been well called the “ heavenly blue ” of the Wild Hyacinth, there are 
many cultivated forms that are better adapted to the flower-bed or the vase. 
Unless it can be naturalised in a wild garden by the thousand, it is, perhaps, a 
mistake to attempt to dig it up. If the attempt is made, it will be realised to how 
great a depth its bulbs manage to bury themselves, especially in sandy soil. As a 
recent writer expresses it : — 
“The bulb is a small, pallid thing, living in the bowels of the earth, with a tail like a comet. I believe it was 
Persephone’s flower, and started to follow her, for it seems to have got half-way to Hades/' 
It is this fact that explains how it is able apparently to monopolise ground occupied 
at other seasons by very different species. Under our oak-woods, for example, we 
commonly see a succession of Blue-bells, Bracken, and Soft-grass ( Holcus mollis L.), 
the fact being that the bulbs of the Blue-bells are below the deep-seated rhizomes of 
the Bracken, while the grass is a surface-rooting species. This is what is termed 
vertical zonation or a seasonally complementary association. 
The white gummy bulbs, nearly an inch in their longer diameter, have an acrid 
taste. The numerous leaves, from a foot to eighteen inches in length, rise erect at 
first, but, as they elongate, bend over in a graceful curve, their brilliant glossy green 
and the similarly coloured flower-stalks forming a beautiful contrast to the blossoms. 
In Mr. G. D. Leslie’s charming “Letters to Marco ” is an admirable description of 
how the minute shot-like seeds discharged from the wan carpels in autumn roll 
down the channelled midribs of these outward bending leaves and so find a lodgment 
at a little distance from the parent bulb. 
Few of the popular names of the plant are in any way worthy of it. “ Cuckoo- 
flower” is common to too many species ; neither “ Crow-toes,” “ Cuckoo’s-stockings,” 
nor its northern equivalent, “ Gowk’s-hose,” is elegant ; “ Bell Bottle ” is fairly 
descriptive of the shape of the flower; and the West Country “ Gramfer-greygles ” 
apparently refers inadequately to the greyish-blue hue of the fully-open blossoms. 
“ Wood Bells” is a pretty name recorded from North Buckinghamshire ; but by far 
the best is the Lancashire “ Ring o’ Bells.” Nothing can be more apt than the 
implied comparison to the symphonia or curved staff hung with a number of bells. 
