You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen, the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it.

Benchley’s joke treats the crocus—an early-blooming flower often nipped by late frosts—as if it were a stubborn family line incapable of learning from experience. The humor comes from applying human expectations of rational adaptation (“a little sense knocked into it”) to a plant that predictably follows seasonal cues regardless of occasional setbacks. Beneath the quip is a wry observation about repetition and optimism: some things (and some people) keep “coming up too soon” despite evidence that it may end badly. The line also plays on the perennial human impulse to scold nature for not conforming to our ideas of prudence.