166 
HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE TUBEROSE. 
Perhaps no account of the history of this fragrant inhabitant of our stoves and 
green-houses is equal to that furnished to the London Horticultural Society, by 
R. A. Salisbury, Esq., and inserted in the First Volume of their Transactions, 
part of which excellent Essay we now give. 
“ The first account that I find of the tuberose, is in L’Ecluse’s History of 
Plants, where it appears that, on the 1st of December, 1594, he received a specimen 
of it, in very bad condition, from Bernard Paludanus, a physician at Rome, to whom 
it was sent by the celebrated Simon De Tovar, of Seville. It certainly had not 
then been many years in Europe ; and Linne, in his Hortus Cliffordianus, on this 
head, refers us to Plunner’s 4 Genera Plantarum,’ who says it was first brought by 
Father Minuti, from the East Indies, into the senator Peiresc’s garden at Boisgencier, 
near Toulon. It is much more probable, however, that it was introduced at an early 
period, and from America, for no author describes it as wild in the East Indies ; 
Loureira only found it cultivated in the gardens of Cochin China ; and Rumph 
says it was unknown in the Island of Amboyna, till the Dutch carried it there from 
Batavia, in 1674. On the contrary, Kamel informs us, that it was brought to the 
Island of Luzon, by the Spaniards, from Mexico; and Parkinson, in 1656, tells us, 
that the plants, which he describes as two species, * both grow naturally in the West 
Indies, from thence been dispersed unto divers lovers of plants.’ The senator 
Peiresc, as may be learnt from Gassendi, was only fourteen years old in 1594, when 
Simon De Tovar had already cultivated it at Seville ; and, according to Redonte, it 
was not planted in his garden at Boisgencier, by Father Minuti, till 1652, whom 
that author makes to have brought it from Persia : I only infer, however, that he 
travelled from Hindostan over land. Redonte moreover asserts, that the authors 
of the Flora Peruviana found it wild in America ; but in the work itself they 
say, cultivated in gardens. Hernandez’s evidence, however, I think, takes away all 
doubt about the matter ; he says, f provenit in frigidis et temperatis regionibus, 
veteri incognita mundo ; ’ and, as the Agave , to which the tuberose is more imme- 
diately allied, is also a native of Mexico, I am fully of opinion that it is indigenous 
there. 
“ The description given by the venerable L’Ecluse of his specimen, half dried and 
battered by the journey, with only the lowest flower of the spike expanded, affords a 
memorable instance of his accuracy and discernment. The size, the stem, insertion 
and figure of the leaves, and their hempy texture, are particularly noticed; the 
shape of the corolla, with its general similarity to that of the Asiatic hyacinths, 
but in consistence rather to that of the orange, is next remarked ; and, having no 
knowledge of the root to guide this judgment, but what he derived from Simon De 
Tovar’s appellation of bulbus Indicus , jiorem album prof evens, hyacinthi orientalis 
