II 
SPRING 
43 
spring garden. Something like it, but with 
more star-like flowers and blue and white, not 
all pure blue, is the “glory of the snow.” Some 
of these lovely spring bulbs are found in Asia 
Minor, near the place where the large snow¬ 
drops came from, and there it grew in quantities 
and flowered as soon as the snows melted. The 
most common kind is called Chionodoxa Lucilics, 
another rather brighter blue is sardensis, while 
the largest of all, as its name implies, is 
gigantea. Any of these will grow just as 
readily as the squills in beds or in the grass. 
There are some dark blue flowers, too, which, 
though not so showy, are nice to have, and that 
is the common grape hyacinth or Muscari. The 
flowers are like a cluster of grapes round the 
stem, which is some six or seven inches high ; 
another taller Muscari , comosum monstruosum, is 
called the “feather hyacinth,” as it looks so soft 
and fluffy and like a feather. 
Among the early - flowering iris there are 
many shades of blues, from pale gray to deep 
purple. The Iris tribe is a very large one, and 
from January till far on into the summer some 
of the many varieties should be in flower in 
every garden. There are two classes of iris, 
those with creeping roots and those with bulbs. 
The Spanish belong to the bulbous class, the 
German to the other ; both have endless con- 
