Popular Flowers, and How to Cultivate Them (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GALANTHUS. Natural Order. Amaryllidacece. Common Name. Snowdrop. Strange it is that so delicate a flower as the Snowdrop should be the first to tell us of the coming of spring, and fearless alike of frost and snow push forth its slender foliage and nodding flowers to meet the sunny hours of the lengthening days. The snowdrop has always been considered the first spring flower, and is, indeed, the first which makes a spring growth and blossom, though sometimes we have gathered the autumn flowers of English Violet and common Ladies' Delight ( Viola tricolor) earlier in the season. In sheltered situations, if the frost has been kept out of the ground, we have found the snowdrop in blossom on the 141)1 of February; but it is usually the first of April before the masses of the plant are fully in bloom. The bulb is small, white, producing two or three narrow linear leaves, which are short at the time of flowering, but which afterwards grow much longer; usually green, but often edged with yellow or white. The flower is solitary, nodding, on a stem about four inches long, and consists of three outer and three inner petals, the former pure white, the latter usually pencilled with pea green, and possesses a delicate, agreeable perfume. The common species ( G. nivalis) is a native of Europe, and is naturalized in England. There are single and double varieties; but the latter is wanting in delicacy and grace, and is not desirable, as it does not bloom or increase as freely as the single. The great Crimean snowdrop (G. plicatus) is a much largerplant, with broad, linear, plicate leaves, and larger flower, blooming much later, and only desirable in collections. A bed of snowdrops is one of the most beautiful features in a garden, and every one having a small patch of ground...