Crocus

The crocus is a forerunner of spring.

Other foreign terms have become so thoroughly Anglicised as to adopt English plurals, and it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the English or the original foreign form is the more correct. None but a pedant would speak of ‘the chori of an opera,’ ‘the croci in a garden,’ or ‘the dogmata of the church;’ […]

Nothing is more short-lived than the erection; like the crocus of spring, it is there for a moment, and then it is gone; one moment the penis is small, soft, and insignificant, and then in the next it is hard, rigid, and three and four times its previous size.

The characteristics of the crocus or vagabond quack doctor appear to find a sardonically appropriate origin in the Erse cruach-bhas, a bloody death.

The crocus of this novel is gusty Professor Louis Delfontaine, quack doctor, showman, charlatan and man of parts.

a crocus bag