Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked.
Southey.
The TULIP (tulipa) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in Syria.
The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban.
What crouds the rich Divan to-day
With turbaned heads, of every hue
Bowing before that veiled and awful face
Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs?
Moore.
The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so great an excess in Holland.
With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart,
At a vast price, with one loved root to part.
Crabbe.
About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip (the Semper Augustus) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of £5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is unique!"