THE SNOWDROP— continued. 
“ from Holland southwards,” to make its natural occurrence in this country 
improbable. 
The egg-shaped bulb is about half an inch in diameter and is built up, like that 
of an onion, of successive “ tunics,” each of which forms an almost complete invest- 
ment. From it rise only two leaves and the flower-stalk, the former fleshy, linear, 
strongly keeled, blunt of apex, and bluish with a mealy covering of waxy bloom. 
The leaves are enclosed at the base in a tubular membranous sheath ; and, whilst 
we may often see them actually melting their way erect through the snows of January, 
they afterwards only assume a slightly more divergent or “ascending” direction. 
The slender cylindrical peduncle rises above the leaves and bears a single 
transparent sheathing spathe, notched at its summit, and having two bright green 
nerves. From the axil of this spathe springs the slender arching pedicel which bears 
the solitary blossom, the “lone flower” of Wordsworth, erect in the bud but 
afterwards the “droop-headed snowdrop ” of Shelley. The three pure white obovate 
concave sepals hang from the obconic ovary and slowly spread outwards until 
the lax blossom has a diameter of fully an inch. A recent writer has described how 
“Slowly and languidly those white wings of theirs opened to show their little green-edged petticoats, as if the angel in 
them should reveal the woman underneath.” 
The three stiff little petals within are wedge-shaped with a notch at the top 
and a green crescentic blotch on the outside of it, whilst down the inner surface run 
two green grooves in which a little nectar is secreted. The six short and capillary 
filaments bear yellow anthers, much longer than themselves, converging into a cone 
round the style, against which they press the two terminal pores by which their pollen 
is to be discharged. Between the two anther-lobes a minute bristle-like point extends 
outwards. The single style carries its terminal stigma beyond the cone of anthers ; 
and there is no doubt that the flowers are often cross-pollinated by hive-bees, almost 
the only large insects that are about at the early season when the Snowdrop is in 
bloom. The hovering insect, probing for the scanty nectar, will touch the bristle- 
like appendages of the anthers and thus detach the terminal pore from the style, so 
that a shower of pollen will fall upon its head. The flowers are, however, homo- 
gamous , i.e. anthers and stigmas mature simultaneously, and they remain open a long 
time. If, therefore, crossing by insect agency should fail, the anthers may separate 
spontaneously and self-pollination occur. 
The name “ Snowdrop ” is probably derived from the German Schneetropfen , 
and refers to the pendants which formed so characteristic a feature in sixteenth- 
century jewellery ; while the pretty English names “ Purification-flower,” “ Candle- 
mas Bells,” and “ Fair Maids of February ” all refer to that season of the plant’s 
flowering when white-robed maidens carried candles at the Feast of the Purification. 
