Among our English wild flowering plants, the principal ones furnished with bulbs or corms are to be found in the orders Iridaceæ, Amaryllidaceæ, and Liliaceæ. Included in the former are the very rare purplish flower known as Columna's trichonema, and the doubtfully native Crocus sativus, the autumnal saffron crocus, referred to by Hakluyt at the close of the sixteenth century: "This commodity of Saffron groweth fifty miles from Tripoli, in Syria, on an high hyll, called in those parts Gasian, so as there you may learn at that part of Tripoli the value of the pound, the goodnesse of it, and the places of the vent. But it is said that from that hyll there passeth yerely of that commodity fifteen moiles laden, and that those regions notwithstanding lacke sufficiency of that commodity. But if a vent might be found, men would in Essex (about Saffron Walden), and in Cambridgeshire, revive the trade for the benefit of the setting of the poore on worke. So would they do in Herefordshire, by Wales, where the best of all England is, in which place the soil yields the wilde Saffron commonly, which showeth the natural inclination of the same soile to the bearing of the right Saffron, if the soile be manured and that way employed."
The Amaryllis order contains the Daffodil and the Snowdrop, as well as Leucojum æstivum, which is thought by some to be a native species. It is, however, the order of the Liliaceæ to which belong the majority of English bulbous flowering plants. Bluebells, like "heavens upbreaking through the earth," purple Fritillaries, yellow Tulips, Stars of Bethlehem with curious greenish flowers, Vernal Scillas, the not-so-pretty S. autumnalis, and the Broad-leaved Garlic, whose white flowers are among the most beautiful of all, though the scent of the whole plant is very "grosse and very unpleasant for fayre ladies and tender lily rose colloured damsels which often time profereth sweet breathes before gentle wordes." There are a few other British bulbous and cormous plants scattered among the various orders, such as the Meadow-saffron which is still used in pharmacy, but the greater number are contained in the three orders named.
Value of Bulbs--Bulbs in Grass--Arrangement in Borders--Bulbs for Cutting--Propagating Bulbs--Diseases of Bulbs