DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF FLOWERS. 371 
T. Asidticus, has large dark-orange flowers, more open 
than 7. Huropeus, on stems one foot high: in June and 
July. This, like the other, is a hardy border-perennial, 
and propagated in the same way. 
TULIPA.—GaRpvEN TULIP. 
(Linneus classed this among barbarous names. In Persian it is called thouly- 
ban, whence undoubtedly its origin. In old French it is called tulipan.] 
Tilipa Gesneriiéna.—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 from foreign countries. 
““ Then comes the Tulip race, where beauty plays 
Her idle freaks ; from family diffused 
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 his 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 
