THE FLORIST'S TULIP. 



102 



and money spent over it than any other in the round of florist' 

 flowers of the olden time. 



To the unfamiliar eye, a representative collection of these 

 Tulips would seem to include two distinct species, which might- 

 be called, roughly speaking, plain and variegated. One bed will 

 be filled with brilliantly marked flowers in which the ground 

 colour is white or yellow, while the companion bed, though very- 

 gay, contains flowers of only one colour each, with here and 

 there one that seems by its full markings to have been mis- 

 planted from the brighter bed. These self-coloured forms have- 

 also distinctly greater height and vigour than their neighbours ; 

 and it is always more or less a difficulty for a stranger to the 

 flower to believe, and still more so to understand, how these 

 Tulips, so differently arrayed in one colour and in more, are not 

 only one and the same species, but that bulbs of one and the 

 same variety, direct descendants from one seed, are growing in 

 each bed ; but here in single and there in double colours. 



I must revert to this extraordinary fact in the natural history 

 of the Tulip when I speak of seedlings. It may be sufficient 

 just now to say that the self-coloured forms, and those marked 

 with some bright colour upon a ground of white or yellow, con- 

 stitute the two most marked divisions of the florist's Tulip. 



Taking first these double- coloured flowers, which by virtue 

 of that attainment are technically known as "rectified," or 

 " broken " flowers, they are classed according to the ground 

 colour, and that of the marking of thep etals. There are two- 

 distinct classes with a white ground colour, and one class with 

 a yellow. The white cannot be too pure, and the yellow may 

 be of any shade from lemon to rich gold, provided that it be of 

 one shade in each variety ; though we have still to bear with 

 kinds in which the yellow ground is paler on the outside of the 

 petal than within. Uniformity of the yellow adds greatly to the 

 decisiveness, distinctness, and brilliancy of the flower, whether 

 the shade be light or dark. 



Of the two white-ground classes, one is distinguished by the 

 markings being in some bright shade of red, from pink to rose 

 and scarlet, and down to deeper cherry-reds ; but the scarlet and 

 what I can only clumsily call best-sealing-wax reds are the most 

 prized. Heavy reds have not the glow and sprightliness, the 

 rosy freshness and piquancy of the brighter tones, and are apt 



