For I have known the cheerless hour,
Have seen the sunbeams cold and pale,
Have felt the chilling wintry gale,
And wept and shrunk, like thee.
Conceive the delight of the first “elegant young female” who saw these words inscribed on the pink-tinted pages of her album, probably beneath some two or three dried flowers of the mishandled plant. Well, well, we have changed all that now; the elegant females have gone, though the minor poet is still with us, and no less minor, though possibly less “refined.”
Earlier than crocus, as early as snowdrops, comes the winter aconite—Eranthis hyemalis. It is grown in quantity in Holland, but as the corms are so very small, not more than half an inch in diameter, one does not see large stretches. It is said that as many as a thousand good corms can be raised on two square metres of land, so naturally it is sold cheap. We prize it as one of the earliest flowers of the year, and because it is hardy, and will, if left to itself, grow anywhere, even under deciduous shrubs. But to our forbears it had another and greater importance, for it was reckoned the “counter-poison monkhood,” and its roots were considered “effectual, not only against the poison of the poisonful helmet flower and all others of that kind, but also against the poison of all venomous beasts,”—a large and useful characteristic to be possessed by any plant.
One of the most beautiful of the early spring flowers is one practically without history—the Scilla sibirica. It is comparatively a newcomer in Dutch bulb fields, for it was brought to Europe from Asia Minor, the Happy Land of bulb collectors, somewhere about 1800. As yet there are only three varieties differing from the original and first discovered kind. These are pale blue, white, and pinkish pale blue, all reared from seed, and none, in the opinion of the uninitiated, to compare with the original blue,—a colour bluer than anything else that grows, except perhaps gentians, and though not so deep and intense, almost more brilliant and striking than they. Coming into flower almost before crocus, growing low and close to the ground, and of this rare and exquisite colour, a field of them in flower against the pearly paleness of the cold landscape is a sight not to be forgotten. In England, though they are admired, they are hardly yet grown so much as one would expect, seeing that they will endure hard treatment and a poor soil, and, if untouched, year after year send their blue flowers through the grass. Immense numbers are grown in Holland, though not round Haarlem, more in the direction of Hillegom, where the land is cheap. The little bulbs increase rapidly, from offsets which grow around the parent. They can also be easily raised from seed, and, contrary to the habit of most bulbs, come to the flowering stage fairly quickly, seed-grown Scillas being of a saleable size in from three to four years after sowing.
It was certainly not this early blooming member of the Scilla family that Reginald Scott had in his mind when, in his Discovery of Witchcraft (1587), he wrote of the countries “where they hang Scilla (which is either a root or in this place garlic) in the roof of the house to keep away witches and spirits.” One wonders a little what he meant, for garlic is not a Scilla, and it hardly seems likely he was referring to what Parkinson calls Scilla alba, or the Great Sea Onion of the Mediterranean. Onions proper, and many varieties of the Alliums, have, of course, played some considerable part in the history of witchcraft. The only two cases of witchcraft which came under the personal notice of the present writer were connected with the homely English onion. In the one case, it was an old man who accused his neighbour of “overlooking the onion bed,” with dire results; and in the other, it was an accredited wizard who “named an onion for” his enemy, stuck it full of pins, and hung it to shrivel in the chimney, in order that the enemy might shrivel as the onion did, and within the year die in agony. As it happened, however, it was the wizard who died. On his death-bed he sent for the other, confessed what he had done, and ordered that the shrivelled onion should be given him, possibly with the idea of undoing the spell, which had rebounded on himself. The enemy is alive to this day, and is as great a man as the other was little, and better known for good works than the other was for bad—wherefrom, obviously, there is a moral.
The Allium family has a long history and many uses, but as ornamental plants they are hardly to be recommended. Some of them are grown in Holland for that purpose, and we read of them in the catalogues—handsome pale blue, yellow, and white flowers, and a few rarer ones pink, very showy, and for the most part somewhat unsavoury if broken or even slightly bruised. They are the smart members of a homely family, and, as is usually the case with such, though no doubt very admirable in some ways, not appealing specially to the majority of people. But Alliums blooming, as they do, in May, are hardly early spring flowers, and having by some devious way reached them, the subject had better be quitted.