THE FLORIST'S TULIP. 



107 



But I assure you that many a visitor to my Tulip blooms has 

 looked at me, with shrewdness screwed up into one eye, and cold 

 unbelief looking out of the other, when I have told the wondrous 

 tale of Tulip changes. This fact in the natural history of the 

 flower explains, as I promised to do, why a collection of Tulips 

 may seem to some to consist of two distinct species, plain and 

 variegated. The plain selfs are nothing more than the original 

 and yet unrectified forms of the feathered and flamed varieties, 

 and they do not change their name with their change of colour. 

 For instance, there will be " Sir Joseph Paxton " in one place as a 

 plain brown flower, and in another as a clear bright yellow, 

 richly marked with black and amber. It is one and the same 

 Tulip by both name and nature, only in the two distinct forms of 

 its floral existence. So also with all other varieties, except newer 

 seedlings or other sorts that as yet have never been seen rectified 

 at all. Tulips while in plain self colours, are technically called 

 " Breeders." The term may seem not very distinctive or descrip- 

 tive, since it is a habit common to all Tulips in a greater or less 

 degree ; but I think it is associated with this flower through a 

 well-known, and very tedious, habit of the seedling bulb in its 

 earlier years, when it is presumably still in its self-coloured form, 

 though still too young to flower. Throughout that period it is 

 exceedingly prolific ; in fact, it is entirely due to the peculiar 

 habit of that time of life that it does not sooner attain to flowering 

 size. Young seedlings well deserve the name of " Breeder," and 

 it clings to them through life, so long as they flower in the usual 

 " Breeder " state — that is, self-coloured. For, instead of each 

 young bulb making a single new one of larger size, it produces 

 several, each jtt the end of a hollow underground " pipe " as it is 

 called ; and these bulblets, which are termed " droppers," so 

 divide the parental energies and substance that each has a very 

 small income out of it ; and living perforce within its means, for 

 it has no independent ones of its own, it is often very little larger 

 and often not so large, as the parent bulbs. 



The usual way of getting on with these young seedlings is 

 to select only the best bulb that each makes yearly, until we 

 obtain one large and wise enough to form a single successor 

 within itself, and not a quantity outside. 



I find, however, that it saves a year, perhaps two, to sow 

 the seed very thinly in the open ground, allowing room for 



