Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp / a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues

by John Parkinson

This Starry Iacinth (being longest knowne, and therefore most common) riseth out of the ground, vsually but with two browne leaues, yet sometimes with three, inclosing within them the stalke of flowers, the buds appearing of a darke whitish colour, as soone as the leaues open themselues, which leaues being growne, are long, and hollow, of a whitish greene on the vpper side, and browne on the vnder side, and halfe round, the browne stalke rising vp higher, beareth fiue or sixe small starre-like flowers thereon, consisting of six leaues, of a faire deepe blew, tending to a purple. The seede is yellowish, and round, contained in round pointed heads, which by reason of their heauinesse, and the weaknesse of the stalke, lye vpon the ground, and often perish with wet and frosts, &c. The roote is somewhat long, and couered with a yellowish coate.

Hyacinthus stellatus flore albo. The white Starry Iacinth.

The white Starry Iacinth hath his leaues like the former, but greene and fresh, not browne, and a little narrower also: the buddes for flowers at the first appeare a little blush, which when they are blowne, are white, but yet retaine in them a small shew of that blush colour.

Flore niueo.

We haue another, whose flowers are pure white, and smaller then the other, the leaues whereof are of a pale fresh greene, and somewhat narrower.

Hyacinthus Stellatus flore rubente. The blush coloured Starry Iacinth.

The difference in this from the former, is onely in the flowers, which are of a faire blush colour, much more eminent then in the others, in all things else alike.

Hyacinthus Stellatus Martius, siue præcox cæruleus. The early blew Starry Iacinth.

This Iacinth hath his leaues a little broader, of a fresher greene, and not browne at all, as the first blew Iacinth of Fuchsius last remembred: the buds of the flowers, while they are enclosed within the leaues, and after, when the stalke is growne vp, doe remaine more blew then the buds of the former: the flowers, when they are blowne open, are like the former, but somewhat larger, and of a more liuely blew colour: the roote also is a little whiter on the outside. This doth more seldome beare seede then the former.