Tulips of Yesterday for Gardens of To-day — By John Nott, 



THE INTERESTING REVIVAL OF THE "COTTAGE" TULIP, WITH A LIST OF RELI- 

 ABLE VARIETIES FOR A SMALL COLLECTION OF THESE BEAUTIFUL MAY FLOWERS 



New 

 York 



HAVE you waked up to the fact that there 

 is a new tulip craze? It is nothing 

 less than giving the old ones — the tall, 

 late, single "cottage" kind — their inning. 

 Better take advantage of it. October is 

 the time and, come May, you will be mighty 

 thankful for the suggestion of extending 

 the usual tulip season by a second means, 

 the admirable Darwin type already having 

 been praised to the skies for that purpose. 



In some old gardens of the Atlantic sea- 

 board a few varieties of cottage tulips still 

 manage to keep up a semblance of one- 

 time splendor, and now and then they are 

 found persisting in the unmown grass 

 "where once the garden was." It is in the 

 cottage gardens of England, Scotland, Ire- 

 land, France, and Flanders, however, that 

 they have lingered most numerously; and 

 for that thanks be to the unknown and hum- 

 ble flower-lovers who, all unconsciously, 

 became conservators of the beautiful. 



The origin of the cottage tulip is lost in 

 obscurity; for years beyond the recollection 

 of any one now living, it seems to have been 

 represented by a great many varieties 

 abroad and by comparatively few here. 

 Baker, in his monograph on tulips, says that 

 Gesner's tulip (7". Gesneriana) "is evidently 

 the original stock of most of the late-flower- 



Bouton d'Or, rich yellow, one of the very best; 

 has cup-shaped flowers 



ing garden forms." This was introduced 

 from the Levant in 1577, which was twenty- 

 six years before the introduction of the 

 sweet-smelling tulip {T. suaveolens) of 

 Southern Europe, which the same authority 

 regards as the source of the early-flowering 

 garden types, such as the Due van Thol 

 group. Of the late varieties in general, 

 Robinson says: "For about three centuries 

 they have been grown by florists, who 

 have raised numerous varieties, which form 

 an enormous class divided into four sections 

 — viz., breeders or self-flowers, bizarres, 

 bybloemens, and roses," the last two some- 

 times being referred to as violet and rose 

 bybloemens. Seedlings flowering for the 

 first time are, as a rule, self-colored. After 

 a few years — once in a while they have 

 been known to wait thirty — they "break" 

 into the flamed type, stripes of color running 

 from the point of the petals toward the 

 base, or the feathered type, a finely pen- 

 ciled color on the margin of the petals. 

 Bizarres are various reds on yellow, bybloe- 

 mens mauves and purples on white, and 

 roses pinks and reds on white. 



In form the cottage tulip varies to a 

 marked degree, as it actually takes in more 

 than one species. The Gesneriana form of 

 blossom, long and slightly pointed; the dis- 

 tinctly cup-shaped, with rounded petals; 

 the retroflexa, the petals curving out when 

 the flower is open, and the somewhat similar 

 fulgens are general sections, a part of which 

 may be further divided. The term "cot- 

 tage" also includes, apparently more for 

 cataloguing convenience than any other 

 reason, some species not accurately classified 

 therein. The parrot tulip, though a Ges- 

 neriana (var. Dracontia), is not included. 



But whether they are relics of Holland's 

 tulip craze of the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, or a development of florists' forms 

 after the collapse of the Dutch boom sent 

 prices way down, or old breeders, the origin 

 of the cottage tulips is less important to the 

 flower-lover of to-day than the adaptabil- 

 ity of these survivors of ancient gardens to 

 his needs. Following the daffodils, the 

 earliest of them are coincident with the last of 

 the early single and double tulips, while the 

 latest of them bloom with the Darwins. 

 Aside from their decorative value in May, 

 their extreme hardiness recommends them 

 for permanent borders and for naturalizing, 

 as well as for ordinary bedding purposes. 

 Stock picked up in European gardens not 

 infrequently could be traced back fifty years, 

 and there is one Dutch variety that is known 

 to have stood the test for almost a century 

 and a half. 



Hardiness, however, needs decided quali- 

 fication in this particular instance. Cottage 

 tulips are ironclad in the sense that they are 

 not bothered by the rigors of the American 

 winter. Planted in bold clumps in the 



1^^3 



hardy border or allowed to run at large in 

 the grass or wild garden, they will flourish 

 undisturbed for years and produce bloom 

 entirely satisfactory in ordinary circum- 

 stances. But in the garden of the collector, 

 who does care a great deal whether his 

 tulips drop down more or less from absolute 

 perfection of size and so on, or whether 

 certain varieties peter out altogether, some 

 renewals will always be necessary. In 

 short, the amateur wiH do well to bear in 

 mind that in a collection of named varieties 

 newly imported cottage bulbs do not do any 

 better here than early tulips. They will 

 live, but several of them break so badly 

 after the first year that the only safe plan 

 is to buy fresh bulbs annually. The bulbs 

 all come from abroad, where the conditions 

 for their development are better. An en- 

 deavor was made to build up a British 

 Columbia stock from Irish bulbs, but no 

 report as to its success is at hand. 



Mr. Chester Hunt, who has a great variety 

 of the cottage type in his notable collection 

 of tulips at Montclair, strongly advises deep 

 planting, the precise depth depending on 

 the nature of the soil. He plants six inches, 

 but five, he thinks, would answer in a heavy. 



Isabella, or Shandon Bells, pointed type; becomes 

 more colored as it ages 



