Feb. 28th, 1885. 
THE HARDENING WORLD, 
407 
there is a fine show of flowers of 0. Alexandras and 
0. Pescatorei, the former in great variety and in¬ 
cluding at the time of our visit, early in the week, a 
very striking form, with the white sepals, petals and 
lip numerously dotted with well-defined bold chocolate 
spots — a distinct and very fine variety. In the 
Cypripedium - house, the inmates of which are in 
surprising health and vigour, we noted some grand 
masses of Ccelogyne cristata, one of them a yard 
across, and profusely bloomed. Among the Dendrobes 
in flower we may mention D. Jamesianum, D. nobile, 
D. moniliforme, D. erassinode lutea, D. Wardianum 
in variety, and the old D. speciosum, perhaps the 
earliest to grow of all the family. The Vandas look 
well, and are giving abundant indications of a fine 
harvest of flowers by-and-bye. The same also may 
be said of the collection of TErides. But there is a 
novelty in bloom in this house now that all are not 
familiar with, a plant of the new and beautiful 
iErides Lawrencise, bearing 2 spikes and 10 blooms 
in all. 
In other houses we noted many examples of the 
always attractive Angracum sesquipedale in various 
stages of flowering. This is one of the giants of the 
genus, both as regards the growth of the plant, and 
the noble proportions of its substantial wax-like 
flowers. Here also in bloom is one of the dwarfs of 
the order, or perhaps we ought to say the dwarf, for 
we know of no smaller species. This is Angraecum 
hyloides, a veritable pigmy—being only about 2 ins. 
high, with spikes of small white flowers H ins. to 
2 ins. long, and the spurs less than half-an-inch in 
length. Trichoglottis cochlearis is another novelty 
also in bloom—a rare species of small dimensions, 
with the habit of growth of an iErides, and bearing on 
a short spike three small blossoms, white flushed with 
rose and barred with crimson. 
In the Phahenopsis-houses, besides some grand 
spikes of P. Schilleriana, P. amabilis, P. grandiflora, 
and the pretty P. Stuartiana, which would be prettier 
still if white instead of creamy-yellow, may also be 
seen the scarce P. intermedia Portei, which is quite a 
gem, distinct from all others and novel as regards the 
colour of the lip—a rich shade of rose which we 
cannot describe. 
In Mr. Seden’s most interesting department, or 
rather, we should say, that part of it which includes 
the hybrids, quite a bevy of seedlings are now in bloom, 
and to the joy of this famous hybridist, there are 
some rare prizes among them. In the foremost place 
we must put Lrelia bella, a lovely hybrid between L. 
purpurata and the old autumn - flowering labiata. 
Three plants were raised from one pod of seeds sown 
ten years ago. One of them flowered last year, when 
it was named and described, and the second one is in 
bloom now, bearing two flowers, which are somewhat 
darker in colour than the first one—a lovely shade of 
deep rose shot with purple. It is a splendid variety, 
and we can but regret that for some years it must be 
a scarce plant. Dendrobium splendidissimum comes of 
the same parentage as D. Ainsworthii, but from a 
cross made at Chelsea, and very closely resembles the 
hybrid D. Leechianum, which came out of the same 
batch. In D. Ainsworthii the sepals and petals are 
pure white, but in D. splendidissimum they are suf¬ 
fused with a rich shade of rosy purple. 
Another interesting hybrid Dendrobe in bloom is 
D. micans, the result of a cross between Low’s 
variety of D. Wardianum and D. lituiflorum, and 
whose blossoms, though quite distinct, partake more 
of the characteristics of the latter parent than of the 
former. It is a good free grower, but the same 
cannot be said of a seedling from the Assam variety 
of Wardianum and lituiflorum, which is rather slow 
in its development. Cypripedium Sedeni candidulum, 
the result of a cross between C. longifolium and 
C. Schlimii album, promises to become an even 
greater favourite than C. Sedeni. It has a larger and 
better shaped flower than the last named, and shows 
the influence of Schlimii album in its pale ground 
colour and pale rose slipper. C. tessellatum porphy- 
rium is a very neat and pretty flower of a rich port- 
vine colour overlaying a light ground. Cypripedium 
leucorrhoda, which has just flowered after being 
nursed for nine years, we did not see, but it is described 
as being most distinct and a beautiful flower. It is 
certainly a vigorous grower, with unmarked bright 
green leaves, but there is only one plant of it which 
is developing another spike. 
THE SNOWDROP. 
“ First, like a flock of children, purely white, 
The Snow r drops lead the van, while every breeze 
Seems visibly to drift the lovely foam 
Upon the knolls ; so sweetly do they take 
Each mossy nook and arbour by surprise.” 
_ Faber. 
In one of those remote by-roads which I have 
traversed much of late, there is a little bit of park 
land, the name of which reminds one of one of Miss 
Austen’s novels. It is an unpretending place, con¬ 
sisting of some rough pasture land bordered by tall 
Poplars and other fences of “ sportive wood run 
wild.” Two of the heavy stone-posted gateways give 
access to the pastures in a neglected and careless sort 
of way. The third leads to the house, which though 
close to the road is almost entirely hid in the thick 
covert of trees on that Side. Beneath the tall Poplars 
and the Firs are great Holly shrubs, and some 
branches of dark feathery Yew stretch over the 
gateway. The lower fences are straggling and uneven, 
and, in the leafless time, more or less open, so that 
you can get glimpses through them of a large 
grassy orchard with crooked, moss-stained boles and 
branches. 
This bit of park land and this orchard was the 
limit of my walk on the morning of one of these 
February days. It was a moist day, with watery 
gleams of sunshine and wandering showers and 
interspaces of blue sky, more like an April day than 
one of this earlier winter month. As I sauntered 
along between the pale pastures, and the brown 
ploughed fallows, and the green springing corn, I 
thought of Coleridge’s poem, “On observing a blossom 
on the first of February,” for that day of 1796 seemed 
to have repeated itself in this year of grace. Of this 
blossom he says— 
Sweet Flower ! that peeping from thy russet stem 
Unfoldest timidly (for in strange sort 
This dark, freize-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering 
month 
Hath borrowed Zephyr’s voice, and gazed upon thee 
With blue, voluptuous eye), alas, poor Flower ! 
These are but flatteries of the faithless year. 
Coleridge does not say what his flower was, but he 
predicts an untimely fate for it when the keen north¬ 
easter shall come down upon it. It was possibly a 
premature blossom on an orchard bough. When I 
came to my orchard there was no bloom of that kind, 
but there was a sweet surprise nevertheless. Close 
by the fence, in one part of it, among the bordering 
timber, there is a Chesnut-tree with overhanging 
branches, thick with large resinous buds, that curve 
downwards all about it. Beneath the boughs the 
brown withered leaves lie thick, but round the bole 
there is a circle of light green moss. All round the 
outer edge of this moss were groups of Snowdrops, 
with the white flowers hanging droopingly from the 
green spikes. Someone says— 
The small green spikes of Snowdrops in the spring 
Are there one morning ere you think of them. 
To pass from flowerless fields to this unexpected 
vision of spring was a surprise almost pathetic in the 
suddenness of it; pathetic because one could hardly 
rid oneself of the idea of conscious life in the flowers. 
They seemed to cling together in a timid, sweet, 
modest fellowship. Wordsworth speaks of “ frail 
Snowdrops that together clung,” and elsewhere says : 
Lone flower, hemmed in with snows, and white as they, 
But hardier far, once more I see the bend 
Thy forehead, as if fearful to ofiend, 
Like an unbidden guest. 
Wordsworth, as we know, had a faith that every 
flower had a consciousness of its existence. We call 
that a pathetic fallacy of the poets, but it is often 
beautifully expressed, and rarely more so than in 
those lines of Heine, not, in this case, of a flower, but 
of a tree : 
A lonely Fir-tree is standing 
On a northern barren height; 
It sleeps, and the ice and snow-drift 
Cast round it a garment of white. 
It dreams of a slender Palm-tree, 
Which far in the eastern land 
Beside a precipice scorching, 
In silent sorrow doth stand. 
Perhaps the Snowdrops have dreams of their own, 
who knows ? It is a pretty conceit, and in any case 
harmless. There are mysteries about flowers that 
impress thoughtful minds more and more as they 
grow older. It is one thing to take a Cockney delight 
in them of the aesthetic kind, lying on the grass, as 
some one has (perhaps wrongly) described Leigh 
Hunt as doing, dallying with a Buttercup and 
“ holding it Italianly,” and quite another thing to 
take the Laureate’s view of “ The flower in the 
crannied wall,” of which he says 
Little flower, if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. 
Flowers are associated with fair women in legendary 
lore, and in Arthurian Bomance, Matthew Arnold 
calls his fair Iseult of The Snow White Hand, 
Our Snowdrop of the Atlantic Sea, 
Iseult of Brittany. 
Who is this Snowdrop by the sea ? 
I know her by her mildness rare, 
Her snow-white hands, her golden hah; 
I know her by her rich silk dress, 
And her fragile loveliness. 
The sweetest Christian soul alive, 
Iseult of Brittany. 
The Snowdrops that I saw growing round the 
Chestnut-tree, and sending up their green spikes 
through the dead leaves that strewed the ground 
beneath the boughs, were early arrivals, and had 
flowered before Candlemas, the day when they were 
due. By-and-bye they will have other sisters on the 
green knolls of the orchard, but as yet only here 
and there was a flower showing. Under the orchard 
boughs seems a fitting place for the Snowdrop. In 
like manner they grew in the old orchards of convents 
and monasteries, for the flower is the Virgin’s flower, 
and on Candlemas Day they were laid upon the altar. 
The Snowdrop in purest white arraie 
First rears her hedde on Candlemas daie. 
Of the creation of the flower the legend says : “An 
angel went to console Eve when mourning over the 
barren earth, where no flowers in Eden grew, and the 
driving Snow was falling to form a pall for earth’s 
antimeous funeral after the fall of man. The angel, 
catching as he spoke a flake of falling snow, breathed 
on it, and bade it take a form and bud and bloom. 
Ere the flake reached the earth Eve smiled upon the 
beauteous plant, and prized it more than all the other 
flowers in Paradise, for the angel said to her : 
This is an earnest, Eve, to thee 
That sun and summer soon shall be. 
The angel’s mission being ended, away up to heaven 
he flew; but where he stood on earth, a ring of 
Snowdrops formed a posy.” 
One wonders whether Wordsworth had this legend 
in his mind when he wrote the verses called “ The 
Coronet of Snowdrops.” 
Who fancied what a pretty sight 
This rock would be if edged around 
With living Snowdrops ? Circlet bright! 
How glorious to this orchard ground ! 
Who loved the little rock, and set 
Upon its head a coronet ? 
After asking whether it was the humour of a child, 
of a lovesick maid, of man or matron, he says— 
I asked—’twas whispered—the device 
To each and all might well belong; 
It is the spirit of Paradise 
That prompts such work, a spirit strong, 
That gives to all the self-same bent 
Where life is wise and innocent. 
With the sun shining, the birds singing, and the 
Snowdrops springing in the orchard, there came a 
sense of peace in striking contrast to the feverish fret 
and turmoil of the world’s work and strife. Very 
fittingly did there come to the mind that sonnet of 
Whlliam Allingham’s inspired by the sight of the 
Snowdrop in time of war :— 
Fair Maid of February, drop of snow 
Enchanted to a flow’r, and there within 
A dream of April green—who without sin 
Conceived wast, but how no man may know; 
I would thou mightest, being of heavenly kin’ 
Pray for us all (thy lips are pure altho’ 
The soil be soak’d with tears and blood) to win 
Some ruth for human folly, guilt, and woe. 
A fitting phantasy and fond conceit— 
Yet mark this little white-green bell, three-cleft, 
And muse upon it. Earth is not bereft 
Of miracles ; lo, here is one complete : 
And after this the whole new spring-time left, 
And all the roses that make summer sweet. 
—John Mortimer, in Manchester City News. 
