^ Spring Flowering 'Bulbs (j£ 



as to hurt those that are not accustomed to it. The 

 Tulipan, however, have little or no smell but are admired 

 for their beauty and variety of colour. The Turks pay 

 great attention to the cultivation of flowers, nor do they 

 hesitate, though by no means extravagant, to expend 

 several aspers for one that is beautiful. I received 

 several presents of these flowers, which cost me not a 

 little.' Conrad Gesner, the great German botanist, 

 states in his De Hortis Germaniae that he saw tulips 

 growing in a garden in Augsburg in 1559. This is the 

 earliest record of their flowering in western Europe. ' In 

 this year of our Lord 1559,' he says, ' at the beginning 

 of April in the garden of the ingenious and learned 

 Councillor John Henry Herwart, I saw there a plant 

 which had sprung from seed which had been procured 

 from Byzantia, or as some say from Cappadocia. It was 

 growing with one large reddish flower, like a red lily, 

 having eight petals of which four are outside, and just 

 as many within, with a pleasant smell, soothing and 

 delicate, which soon leaves it.' We do not know the 

 exact date when tulips were introduced into England, but 

 it must have been before 1582, for Richard Hakluyt in his 

 Remembrances of Things to be Endeavoured at Constan- 

 tinople (1582) says, * And now within these foure years 

 there have been brought into England from Vienna in 

 Austria divers kinds of flowers called Tulipas, and these 

 and others procured thither a little before from Con- 

 stantinople by an excellent man called M. Carolus 

 Clusius.' Clusius (de l'Escluse) came to Leyden as 

 Professor of Botany in 1593, and from his garden the 

 bulbs were either sold or stolen till tulips were soon 

 commonly grown throughout the United Provinces. 

 I 65 



