VARIETY IN NEWER FLOWERS 63 



Tulip and iris both are glorified by clustering foregrounds 

 of violas or pansies. We shall do well to remember this, and 

 to sow the seeds of these little things before the summer wanes. 

 On the tenth of November last year I saw in two Detroit gardens 

 magnificent violas in full bloom from seed sowti in the open the 

 August before, purple, yellow, lavender as large as the biggest 

 pansies — they had come through one or two heavy frosts with 

 no ill efTect whatever. Pansies are perhaps the commonest 

 possession in flowers, but their good use is not so general as 

 it should be. One mercy — they are seldom seen now in circles 

 at the base of oaks or elms as once they were. Sow their seed 

 in August for bloom the following spring. They create the 

 prettiest possible companionships if grown in some spot where 

 late tulips bloom among the blade-like iris leaves, the iris flowers 

 to follow. 



Two new tulips caused me great unrest last spring. I could 

 only read of, not see them. One was tulip Fantasy, a parrot 

 (a pink parrot — fancy that!), described as a glorious flower of 

 glistening rich pink color, shaded with orange pink on the inside 

 of its ragged segments and stained with brownish green on the 

 outside of the three outer ones. Mr. Peter R. Barr wrote that 

 this was a new break in parrot tulips, that the general tone is 

 of a lovely soft rose-color, salmon-rose within and a large white 

 centre rayed blue. The flowers, he added, expand to a great size. 



"Darwin tulip Zwanenburg is the only pure white tulip ex- 

 tant," writes IVIr. C. G. Van Tubergen, Jr. from Haarlem. Yet 

 the Barrs last year showed Carrara, a white Darwin. Without 

 having seen these one can easily foresee the manifold uses to 

 which a white Darwin may be put both in cutting and in the 

 border. To quote ]Mr. Van Tubergen, "I raised tulip Zwanen- 

 bm-g from seed, and found a single bulb about a dozen years ago 

 in a batch of hybridized Darwin tulip seed. The flower is pure 



