Related to hyacinths, Muscari, grape hyacinths, are maybe a delicious sounding relative. Long slender bulb foliage often skirts the flowers, which bloom in spring.
As one of God’s crayons, He might have made a very playful genus. Their flower throats, less open than hyacinth, make a flower that resembles a grape, a fruit not a flower. Native to Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, grape hyacinths’ reach can intersect with where grapes can grow. Their flowers seem arranged at playful intervals, like googly eyes. The color is often not quite blue or purple, with complex hues that are hard to decipher, perhaps like a dark grape too, as if He wanted to make it a similar experience to the seeing the color of a grape, for a playful experience. Some muscari, like Muscari comosum mostrosum, are not grape-like in flower shape but feathery, as if another type of muscari exploded. Muscari neglectum is said to smell like ripe plums. The seeds can sometimes scatter, creating a playful effect too.
Sometimes planted in children’s gardens, they have a stature that’s not really either erect or nodding perhaps, but maybe waggling. It’s as if God wanted to show us a plant with a disarming authority. Perhaps it is out of respect for this concept that they are sometimes planted in great plentitude, to honor their authority in being seen all together.
Sources:
The New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Horticulture, 1981
