My dear Henry
I send you (to read) two little works of Tenore's <1> - which when you have done with, pray send to the Hort. Soc.
Pray account for some plants in pots in my room, having been left dry as a bone all summer, shooting out now (never having been watered) they are, Orchis undulata, Colchicum Bivonĉ a muscari, & (after watering) a tiny Ophiogloss lusitanicum which makes me hope those I sent you may have shot forth equally. Tenore says his Crocus received from Fischer <2> is C. speciosus, & very pretty it is - flowering entirely naked may it not be nudiflorus? it is blue with yellow mouth, petals this shape [illustration] & veined - no smell, stigma much divided bulb membranaceous almost like the spring one biflorus pusillus &c. I now think I know all the Crocus & Colchicums well C. Thomasii is more like vernus than any of the Autumnals I know, smells strong of saffron, & its flowers are more cupshaped than the others - leaves ciliated - C. longiflorus is the prettiest of all the Autumnals & flowers so much more abundantly than C. Sativus that the peasants collected the saffron from it for the markets - C. medius & secotinus, & even nudiflorus ought to be at Abb. <3> but I do not know them well.
I sent you various packets some time ago which I hope came safe - I now think I know the various Colchica, when I see them, no easy matter I assure you. I saw C. Cupani from Sicily & montanum from Genoa in flower this autumn together in horto <4> the first is almost white & usually narrow leaved, the other lively pink & broad leaved, two good varieties. C. Bivonĉ is usually pale chequerflowered, narrow leaves rising soon after the flower, not so immediately as the great C. Persicum - but not waiting for spring - leaves diverge like those of an Orchis.
I am delighted to find you have made acquaintance with Niemcewicz <5> & Ct Zamoyski <6> I hope they will settle & enjoy some repose in England at last. I mean to be in England at Xmas, till when adieu -
Yr affte
W F S
Notes:
1. Michel Tenore (1780-1861), Italian botanist & traveller.
2. One of two botanist-friends of WTHFS in St Petersburg. [See Doc. No: 00334; Doc. No: 00790; Doc. No: 00426].
3. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
4. In a botanical garden.
5. Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (1757-1841), Polish scholar, poet and statesman and Adjutant to Kosciusko in the fighting against the Russians. [See Doc. No: 02399 and Doc. No: 02409].
6. Count Wladyslaw Zamoyski (1803-1868), Polish patriot who came to live in London, where he was involved in the emigré organisation set up by his uncle, Prince Adam Czartoryski, to work for a free Poland. He is mentioned in the Correspondence particularly during the early 1830s.