DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF FLOWERS. 371 



T. AsiaticuS; has large dark-orange flowers, more open 

 than T. Uuropceus, on stems one foot high ; in June and 

 July. This, like the other, is a hardy border-perennial, 

 and j)ropagated in the same way. 



TTJLIPA.— OA.RDEN Tulip. 



[Linnaeus classed this among barbarous names. In Persian it is called thouly- 

 ban, wtience undoubtedly its origin. In old Frenchiit is called tulipati.] 



Tulipa Gesneriana. — The Garden Tulip, has been 

 called the King of florist's flowers, having been a prime 

 object of attention with this class of cultivators, for nearly 

 three centuries. Its popularity has, for many years, been 

 on its wane. It appears to have been brought from Per- 

 sia by the way of Constantinople, in 1559, and in a cen- 

 tury afterwards to have become an object of considerable 

 trade in the Netherlands. The taste for Tulip in Eng- 

 land was at its greatest height about the end of the sev- 

 enteenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. 

 It afterwards declined, and gave way to a taste for rare 

 plants fi*om foreign countries. 



" Tlien comes the Tulip race, where beauty plays 

 Her idle freaks ; from family difTused 

 To family, as flies the father dust. 

 The varied colors run ; and while they break 

 On the charmed eye, th' exulting florist marks 

 With secret pride the wonders of liis hand." 



The Tulip is a flower of easy cultivation. The varieties 

 are endless. With the early and late varieties the garden 

 can be made very gay all the month of May. 



These flowers became, in the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, the object of a trade for which there is no paral- 

 lel, and their price rose beyond that of the precious met- 

 als. Many authors have given an account of this trade, 

 some of whom have misrepresented it. One called it 



