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

We haue of late gained another sort of this kinde, differing chiefly in the flower, which is diuersly striped thorough euery leafe of the flower, with a paler purple colour, whereby the flower is of great beauty: this might seeme to bee a degeneration from the former, yet it hath abiden constant with me diuers yeares, and giueth seede as plentifully as the former.

16. Colchicum flore pleno. Double flowred Medowe Saffron.

The double Medowe Saffron is in roote and leafe very like unto the English kinde: the flowers are of a fine pale or delayed purple colour, consisting of many leaues set thicke together, which are somewhat smaller, as in the English flower, being narrow and long, and as it were round at the points, which make a very double flower, hauing some chiues with their yellow tips, dispersed as it were among the leaues in the middle: it flowreth in September, a little after the first shew of the earlier Medowe Saffrons are past.

17. Colchicum variegatum pleno flore. The party coloured double Medowe Saffron.

We haue another of these double kinds (if it be not the very same with the former, varying in the flower as nature pleaseth oftentimes; for I haue this flower in my garden, as I here set it forth, euery yeare) whose flowers are diuersified in the partition of the colours, as is to be seene in the single party coloured Medowe Saffron before described, hauing some leaues white, and others pale purple, and some leaues halfe white and halfe purple, diuersly set or placed in the double flower, which doth consist of as many leaues as the former, yet sometime this party coloured flower doth not shew it selfe double like the former, but hath two flowers, one rising out of another, making each of them to be almost but single flowers, consisting of eight or ten leaues a peece: but this diuersity is not constant; for the same roote that this yeare appeareth in that manner, the next yeare will returne to his former kinde of double flowers againe.

18. Colchicum Vernum. Medowe Saffron of the Spring.

This Medowe Saffron riseth vp very early in the yeare, that is, in the end of Ianuarie sometimes, or beginning, or at the furthest the middle of February, presently after the deepe Frosts and Snowes are past, with his flowers inclosed within three greene leaues, which opening themselues as soone almost as they are out of the ground, shew their buds for flowers within them very white oftentimes, before they open farre, and sometimes also purplish at their first appearing, which neuer shew aboue two at the most vpon one roote, and neuer rise aboue the leaues, nor the leaues much higher then they, while they last: the flower consisteth of six leaues, long and narrow, euery leafe being diuided, both at the bottome and toppe, each from other, and ioyned together onely in the middle, hauing also six chiues, tipt with yellow in the middle, euery chiue being ioyned to a leafe, of a pale red or deepe blush colour, when it hath stood a while blowne, and is a smaller flower then any Medowe Saffron, except the small Spanish kindes onely, but continueth in his beauty a good while, if the extremity of sharpe Frosts and Windes doe not spoile it: the leaues wherein these flowers are enclosed, at their first comming vp, are of a brownish greene colour, which so abide for a while, especially on the outside, but on the inside they are hollow, and of a whitish or grayish greene colour, which after the flowers are past, grow to bee of the length of a mans longest finger, and narrow withall: there riseth vp likewise in the middle of them the head or seede vessell, which is smaller and shorter, and harder then any of the former, wherein is contained small round browne seede: the roote is small, somewhat like vnto the rootes of the former, but shorter, and not hauing so long an eminence on the one side of the bottome.

19. Colchicum vernum atropurpureum. Purple Medowe Saffron of the Spring.

The flower of this Medowe Saffron, is in the rising vp of his leaues and flowers together, and in all things else, like vnto the former, onely the flowers of this sort are at their first appearing of a deeper purple colour, and when they are blowne also are much deeper then the former, diuided in like manner, both at the bottome and toppe as the other, so that they seeme, like as if six loose leaues were ioyned in the middle part, to make one flower, and hath his small chiues tipt with yellow, cleauing in like manner to euery leafe.