36 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



he himself collected on his travels in Austria, Italy, 

 and Spain. Lord Zouche gave his garden into the 

 keeping of the distinguished Mathias de Lobel, a 

 famous physician and botanist of Antwerp and 

 Delft. Lobel was made botanist to James I and 

 had a great influence upon flower culture in England. 

 For him the Lobelia was named an early instance 

 of naming plants for a person and breaking away 

 from the quaint descriptive names for flowers. 



Elizabethan gardens owed much to Nicholas 

 Leate, or Lete, a London merchant who about 1590 

 became a member of the Levant Company. As a 

 leading merchant in the trade with Turkey and 

 discharging in connection with commercial enter- 

 prise the duties of a semi-political character, Leate 

 became wealthy and was thus able to indulge his 

 taste for flowers and anything else he pleased. He 

 had a superb garden and employed collectors to hunt 

 for specimens in Turkey and Syria. His "servant at 

 Aleppo" sent many new flowers to London, such as 

 tulips, certain kinds of lilies, the martagon, or 

 Turk's Cap, for instance, irises, the Crown-Im- 

 perial, and many new anemones, or windflowers. 

 The latter became the rage, foreshadowing the tulip- 

 mania of later years. Nicholas Leate also imported 

 the yellow Sops-in-Wine, a famous carnation from 



