THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 99 



apothecary's wife, as a token of his gratitude for 

 her kindness to him in sickness. According to this 

 story, the bulb first bloomed in 1557, but according 

 to some authorities tulips were not seen here at all 

 until 1577. The sailor story, when told in detail, 

 offers several other difficulties. It rather presupposes 

 that the man thought the bulb of value, which he 

 might or might not have done. And it certainly 

 demands that the recipient of it should have been 

 a good gardener and woman of business, for she is 

 narrated to have at once grown and multiplied her 

 tulip and sold the offsets for a guinea apiece — a 

 large price in Elizabethan England for a new and 

 as yet unfashionable flower, introduced merely by 

 a country apothecary's wife. It also puts the date 

 of the first flowering in England as 1559, the date 

 when, it is said, Conrad Gesner, the Swiss botanist 

 and name-father to the Gesneriana, brought the 

 tulip from Constantinople to Augsburg. There 

 is another story which ascribes the first intro- 

 duction of the tulip into England to Sir Philip 

 Sidney, who is reputed to have brought it from the 

 Continent. Personally I prefer that account ; it is 

 in keeping with the character of the great Eliza- 

 bethan, also it offers less difficulties. Sidney, we 

 know, was on a diplomatic mission to the German 



