Coming with the crocuses, before the snow is off the ground, and
remaining long after their regal gold and purple chalices have
withered, the Siberian scillas sold by seedsmen here deserve a
place in every garden, for their porcelain-blue color is rare as
it is charming; the early date when they bloom makes them
especially welcome; and, once planted and left undisturbed, the
bulbs increase rapidly, without injury from overcrowding.
Evidently they need little encouragement to run wild.
Nevertheless they are not wild scillas, however commonly they may
be miscalled so. Certainly ladies' tresses, known as wild
hyacinth in parts of New England, has even less right to the
name.

Our true native wild hyacinth, or scilla, is quite a different
flower, not so pure a blue as the Siberian scilla, and paler; yet
in the middle West, where it abounds, there are few lovelier
sights in spring than a colony of these blossoms directed
obliquely upward from slender, swaying scapes among the lush
grass. Their upward slant brings the stigma in immediate contact
with an incoming visitor's pollen-laden body. As the stamens
diverge with the spreading of the divisions of the perianth, to
which they are attached, the stigma receives pollen brought from
another flower, before the visitor dusts himself anew in
searching for refreshment, thus effecting cross-pollination.
Ants, bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles may be seen
about the wild hyacinth, which is obviously best adapted to the
bees. The smallest insects that visit it may possibly defeat
Nature's plan and obtain nectar without fertilizing the flower,
owing to the wide passage between stamens and stigma. In about an
hour, one May morning, Professor Charles Robertson captured over