Tu viens ensevelir dans tes habits de fête
Les cadavres couchés au champ de leur défaite.”
Aloys Blondel (the Swiss Poet).
Perhaps the only flower to bless, and bless again, the passage of the scythe over the damp slopes and fields of Alpine Switzerland is Colchicum autumnale, the so-called Autumn Crocus; for, from the close-cropped grass it pushes up its blossoms when all other field-growth has done its utmost. What sorry plight it would be in if the tall yellowing plants and grasses were still left standing, cumbering the ground with a dense and matted vegetation! It would be smothered; or, at best, it would have a fearsome struggle to see the sky. One wonders how it contrived when, in ages past, these meadows went uncut. One wonders if the active appetites of browsing animals sufficed to clear the ground in anticipation of its scheduled advent; and, should this not have been the case, one wonders if at that time it were an inhabitant of such fields as these, or whether it were denizened in more propitious places?
For as soon as the haymakers have gone their way, this lovely flower begins its apparition. Often, even within a week of the haymakers’ visit, hundreds upon hundreds of its creamy-white pointed buds will show as if by magic above the close turf; and after a day or two more of sunshine, the fields will have regained what is almost springtime life and gaiety. Many of us were sighing whilst we watched the scythe’s disastrous progress, and were saying that all was over and it was time to be moving plainwards; but those of us who knew, said: “Wait—wait! These fields have yet another trump-card to play!”
“What awe and worship follow in her wake,
When Nature works wild magic all her own!”
A week ago we looked for colour to the autumn-infected bush and tree, and now quite suddenly, over the tired fields, there steals a pale magenta glow, almost as the spring-glow spread by the Bird’s-Eye or Mealy Primrose; a week ago we lived and dreamed upon the past, and now we are startled back to the present by this, “the last that the damp earth yields”—last but not least—last but in some ways equal to the first.
This Colchicum receives, in spring, in summer, and in autumn, as much general attention as any plant in Alpine or sub-Alpine vegetation. In spring and summer the cluster of rich-green Lily-like leaves attracts the eye and raises the curiosity and expectation of even the casual observer, especially when this observer notices what he almost invariably takes to be a flower-bud nestling in the heart of the leaves; for if there is one family of plants which the world worships more than another, it is the Lily family. And this Autumn Crocus is very commonly taken for a Lily—a Lily soon to burst into rare and glorious bloom.