GRAPE-HYACINTH, the name given to certain species of Muscari, a genus of the lily family (Liliaceae), comprising about 4o species, natives chiefly of the Mediterranean region. They are small bulbous plants with narrow fleshy basal leaves and small usually blue urn-shaped or globose flowers, nodding or pendulous in a more or less dense cluster terminating a single flowering stem (scape). The common grape-hyacinth (M. botryoides), called also grape-flower, baby's-breath and blue-bells, widely cultivated in gardens, is native to southern Europe and western Asia and has run wild in meadows and thickets in the eastern United States. It has narrow erect leaves, about as long as the flower-stalk, which usually grows from 4 in. to I 2 in. high, bearing at the top about 12 globose blue, or in some varieties white, faintly-scented flowers, about in. long, crowded in a cluster. The starch grape-hya cinth (M. racemosum), native to Europe and found in sandy fields in England and Scotland, has become naturalized from gar dens in the eastern United States.
It grows about a foot high, and bears very narrow, almost cylindrical, recurved leaves and numer ous starchy-scented, urn-shaped blue flowers in a dense raceme. Various other species are more or less cultivated.