54 
BARR S GENERAL BULB CATALOGUE, Autumn, 1897. 
BARR’S 
Beautiful “ Gold jVledal ” English Tulips. 
MAY-FLOWERING — (See Illustration on page 29). 
Awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal National Tulip Society at the 
Temple Show, London, May 19th, 1896, and the Gold Medal at the Royal 
Botanic Society’s Tulip Show and Conference, May 12th, 1897. 
These Beautiful English Tulips we can confidently recommend to amateurs for select places in 
the garden, and for massing in flower-beds and borders. They form a valuable succession to the Early 
Tulips, while for symmetry of form and beauty of marking they far surpass them. 
Our Long Ditton Collection of English Tulips is the largest one in existence and well worth 
a visit in May, when the flowers may be seen in all their beauty. 
Extract from The Westminster Gazette, May nth, 1897. 
THE FEAST OF THE TULIP. 
TIIE ROMANCE OF A FASHIONABLE FLOWER. 
After an interval of fifty years, a great Tulip Show and Conference is to be held to morrow and 
Thursday in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Regent’s Park. This is only one sign of a revival of interest in 
the flower which has as romantic a history as any plant all the world over. Another sign of a mild 
repet, ion of the Tulip craze of three centuries ago is the fact that Tulip feasts, dances, and dinners are 
quite the fashion, and that at last week’s Drawing Room, Tulips were among the most popular flowers 
both in their natural state, in bouquets, as dress ornaments, and in fanciful designs woven into the 
magnificent brocades of the Court trains. The proudest of early garden flowers thus pressing once more 
to the front, it is interesting at the present moment to trace the history and follow the fortunes past and 
present of the Tulip. F 
In the seraglio of the Shadow of God, when the world was a few centuries younger, there was one 
festival in early spring which for dazzling splendour outshone the rest of the Eastern fairylike night scenes 
Unnumbered artificial suns, moons, and stars lit up the Sultan’s beautiful gardens, and in the mystic 
light which turned night into day, tens of thousands of Tulips stood proudly up on their tall slim stalks 
the goblet of each blossom perfect, in form and in colour. Among this dazzling dream the Sultan and his 
harem, and whoever else was great and mighty at the Court of Constantinople, worshipped at the shrine 
of the Tulip, and the whole of the East echoed the praise of the thouliban , or Turban flower the 
corruption of which term has become our name for the flower. 
The West at that period knew nothing of the Tulip, though it had been great in the East for more 
years than men remembered. India, Persia, and the Levant had, in the course of ages, woven around it 
countless legends of love and life and death ; great poets sang its praises ; the heathen laid it at the feet 
of his gods, and the early Christian of the East pointed to it as the “ Lily of the field,” which afforded 
to Christ the subject of a divine sermon to which the world has clung, and still is clinging, as to a never- 
failing help when the burden of life grows heavy. 
In the sixteenth century an Ambassador of the Emperor of Germany to the Sublime Porte, going 
from Adrianople to Constantinople shortly after mid-winter, came upon a wondrous sight. On the road- 
side, among the weeds and grasses, there rose in glorious beauty clump after clump, bed after bed, of tall 
goblet-shaped flowers. As the sun shone upon them, they blazed with the colour of fire and sunlight, and 
the smooth broad petals formed a deep cup classically simple and perfect, closing over a heart of gold. 
Before long a few Tulip bulbs reached Germany, and thence to England it was but a short journey. 
1577 is the exact date at which the Tulip, now one of our most popular flowers, alike in the parks and 
gardens of the great and at the door of the poor cottager, was introduced into this country. 
VisUora invited to see Barr s “Gold Medal" English Tulips flowering In May. 
