WHAT IS IT 1 153 



be considered as petals ; they are detached down to the base, 

 and full in proportion as the pistil is developed. The latter 

 is composed of three stigmata, attached, without the inter- 

 mediary of a stylus (sessile stigmata), to a free ovary (that is, 

 an ovary not joined to the perianth), which, as it develops, 

 forms a capsule with three angular projections marking so 

 many lobes ; each of these lobes includes a great number 

 of compressed seeds. As in all the Liliaceae, and in many 

 other vegetable families, the stamens, six in number, are 

 hypogynous, that is to say, inserted at the base of the 

 division of the perianth. The stem, nearly two feet in 

 height, bears a single flower only : the leaves are lanceolate, 

 like all of the family, and the root is formed of a bulb, 

 with thin and brownish-coloured external tunica. 



Is the wild tulip an original species, or only a degenerate 

 variety of the cultivated tulip (Tulipa Gesneriana)? The 

 question is one not very easily solved. 



It is generally admitted that the cultivated tulip, which 

 everybody knows, was introduced into Europe from the 

 East, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. It is, 

 at all events, certain that none of our older botanists speak 

 of our wild tulip. Dodonn6e himself refers to the Eastern 

 tulip only, of which he was the first to give, in his " Historia 

 Stirpium," a tolerable delineation. 



A circumstance which would favour the belief that the 

 tulip was imported from the East is the Oriental derivation 

 of its name : tulipa, in Italian tulipano, comes to us, it is 

 said, from the Turkish tuliband, or the Persian dulbend, 



