NOTES ON THE GENUS TULIPA. 
195 
The genus includes, according to Mr. Baker’s revision, about 
fifty, and according to Dr. Begel’s, about thirty 'species, to which 
he has since added ten or twelve more, and extends from Great 
Britain, through Central and Southern Europe, Asia Minor 
and Central Asia, to Japan, though the majority of the species, 
are natives of Southern Europe, Asia Minor, and Turkestan. 
I have endeavoured, without success, to find some natural 
and at the same time simple manner in which to divide the 
genus into sections, as I have been unable to follow out the 
sections formed by Mr. Baker and Dr. Begel, which are founded 
on the character of the bulb tunics, and on the pubescence of 
the peduncle and filaments. 
None of these characters seem to me sufficiently well marked 
or uniform to be trusted implicitly in naming plants in this 
genus, and it would be even more unsafe to rely on characters 
drawn from the leaves, colour, or shape of the perianth, or from 
the stigma or anthers. 
The genus is without doubt an extremely natural and homo¬ 
geneous one, and, with the exception of three little-known 
species from Asia and Japan which I have not seen, and which 
are included under the subgenus Orithyia (Don) by Mr. Baker,, 
it contains no plants which could not be recognized at a glance 
as Tulips by the most casual observer. Under these circum¬ 
stances it seems to me better to leave it in its natural undivided 
state, than to try by artificial means to cut it up into sections. 
The numerous Tulips recently discovered in Central Asia by 
Col. Korolkow, M. A. Begel, and other Bussian Botanists, are 
fully described in the first part of a work recently published by 
Dr. Begel on the Flora of Turkestan, containing the Primulaceae 
and Liliaceas. As, however, this work is in Bussian, it is. 
practically useless to all but a very few botanists. From what 
I have seen of the Turkestan Tulips in a living state, and from 
the descriptions and figures published in the “ Garten Flora,”' 
and in the “ Descriptions Plantarum Novarum,” I am inclined 
to think that some of them will prove when better known 
to be local forms or varieties of species found in other parts of 
Asia. 
The same observations will apply to the various Levantine 
Tulips described by Boissier and others ; but it seems to me very 
difficult, if not impossible, to understand the characters and 
