Robertson . — The ‘ Droppers' of Tulip a and Erythronium. 435 
(d) The Life History of the Tulip as described in the Literature. 
The history of a garden Tulip, from the seedling stage described in the 
last section up to the time when it produces its brilliant parti-coloured 
flowers, is a very long one. For about six years 1 the seedlings do not bloom, 
but each season they produce a single foliage leaf above ground and a 
dropper below. ‘The usual game of “ droppers ” goes merrily on, till the 
young bulbs feel, that if they drop any deeper, there will be suffocation 
through their leaves never reaching the surface alive — and they will take 
care not to incur this 2 .’ The first flowers produced are as a rule self- 
coloured, and the plants at this stage are known in England as c breeders,’ 
and on the Continent as ‘ Couleurs,’ ‘ Espectanten,’ or ‘ Muttertulpen.’ 
After two or three years 3 the flowers may ‘ break ’ into different colours, 
but this process does not necessarily occur so soon. Some mother-tulips, 
which have been known in the self-coloured form for fifty years or more, 
may still occasionally e break V A change of situation, especially into a 
warm soil, is said to encourage ‘ breaking 5 .’ Rarely the first flowers pro- 
duced by a seedling may be ‘ broken,’ but where this occurs they do not 
1 break ’ according to the florist’s rules of beauty, their colours being mixed 
and wanting in clearness. Sometimes ‘ broken ’ Tulips return to the plain 
colours of the ‘ breeders.’ The great Haarlem bulb growers, E. H. Krelage 
and Sons, write to the Gardeners’ Chronicle 6 , ‘ There are a great number of 
varieties of Tulips, among which is a form of atavism. Occasionally some 
specimens lose their character and return to a form of tulip with narrow 
flowers, and mostly of one colour only. These Tulips are known in 
Holland as “ thieves,” and are always taken out and thrown away as of no 
value. We have for some years planted these variations separately and 
found them constant.’ Solms-Laubach 4 has observed that such Tulips 
are especially liable to produce droppers. 
Tulip droppers seem to have been repeatedly rediscovered, judging 
by the curiously scattered and disconnected references to them which occur 
in the literature. Besides the notices of them which occur in the papers of 
Horner, Oliver, Solms-Laubach, and Hall, already quoted, we find that 
de Vriese 7 refers to them in 1841, and Krtinitz 8 five years later describes 
them as bulbs growing at the ends of root fibres. A case of droppers from 
the lateral buds of a mature Tulip is commented on by a writer in the 
Gardeners’ Chronicle in 1866 9 , and another by Masters 10 in 1869. The 
1 J. G. Krtinitz, Oekonomisch-technologische Encyklopadie, Berlin, 1846. And P. Miller, 
The Gardener’s and Botanist’s Dictionary, 1807. 
2 Rev. Francis D. Horner, The Florist’s Tulip, Jrn. R. Hort. Soc., Jan. 1893. 
3 Krtinitz, loc. cit., and A. D. Hall, The English or Florist’s Tulip, Jrn. R. Hort. Soc. 
Sept. 1902. 
1 Solms-Laubach, Weizen und Tulpe, Leipzig, 1899. 
5 A. D. Hall, loc. cit. 6 Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1881, prt. ii, p. 182. 
7 W. H. de Vriese, loc. cit. 8 Krtinitz, loc. cit. 
9 Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1866, p. 386. 10 Masters, Vegetable Teratology, 1869. 
Gg 
