“Snow-white is very vague. There is nearly always so much blue about the colour of snow, from its crystalline surface and partial transparency, and the texture is so unlike that of any kind of flower, that the comparison is scarcely permissable. I take it that the use of ‘snow-white’ is, like that of ‘golden-yellow’, more symbolical than descriptive, meaning any white that gives an impression of purity… I should say that most white flowers are near the colour of chalk; for although the word chalky-white has been used in a rather contemptuous way, the colour is really a very beautiful warm white, but by no means an intense white.”

Gertrude Jekyll, Wood and Garden, 1899