142 POETICAL LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
in this group to the May, and occupied my space with 
a description of its sweetness and beauty, I should have 
wandered wherever fancy had led me, in pursuit of 
some old-world love-story connected with the Convol¬ 
vulus. 
Few know that there is a beautiful fragrant Yellow 
Tulip which grows wild in our own pastoral England, 
and which may often be found in full flower, in the 
warm beds of chalk-pits, about the end of April, or 
early in May. It gives pleasure to me, a true lover 
as I am of my own country, to know, that we are 
neither indebted to Turks nor turbans for the origin of 
this splendid wild-flower, which was, no doubt, more 
plentiful in the days of our old Elizabethean poets, 
and which is mentioned in Ben Jonson’s “ Pan’s Anni- 
* 
versary ” by the very name it still bears. The gaudy 
Tulip of our gardens is ill chosen as the emblem of a 
Declaration of Love ; nor is it at all necessary in the 
floral alphabet, when the Rosebud (a thousand times a 
more fitting representative) denotes a Confession of 
Love, and in both cases the sense and meaning are the 
same. Some have selected the Rosebud as the em¬ 
blem of a girl, — the language of flowers needs neither 
girl, boy, nor infant; Love is ever young, and the 
