The ways of seedling tulips are rather strange; when they first flower, which is sometimes not till they are as much as seven years old, they are usually self-coloured. But in a few years’ time they “break,” that is, the flowers are no longer self-coloured but variegated. When this will happen it is not possible to foretell, sometimes, most usually, within two or three years of first blooming; sometimes, though not often, not till after five-and-twenty or thirty years. The reason of this remarkable peculiarity does not seem to be clearly understood. Parkinson, it is true, offers one: “All such flowers not having their originall in that manner (for some that have such or the like marks from the beginning, that is, from the first and second years flowering, are constant, and doe not change), but as I said, were of one colour at the first, do show the weakness and decay of the roots, and this extraordinary beauty in the flower, is but as the brightness of a light, upon the very extinguishing thereof, and doeth plainly declare that it can doe his master no more service, and therefore with this jollity doth bid him good-night.” Unfortunately modern experience proves this to be incorrect, for the variegation when produced usually continues without reversion to the self-coloured original for an indefinite length of time. There are certain distinct types in the variegations. Robinson describes them as follows: “A feathered tulip has the colour finely pencilled round the margin of the petals, the base of the flowers being pure; in a “Flamed” flower stripes of colour descend from the top of the petals towards the base. In the Bizarres the colours are red, brownish-red, chestnut and maroon, the base being clear yellow; in the Bybloomens the colours are black and various shades of purple, the base being white; and in the Roses, rose of various shades, and also deep red or scarlet, the base being white again.” Most of which variegations, though still much appreciated by some people, have not the place in popular admiration they had two hundred years ago, or even as recently as one hundred, some of the authors of which period give simple directions for the helping of nature in “effecting the marvellous work of breaking the breeding tulip into diversified colours.”
“WHOSE LEAVES WITH THEIR CRIMSON GLOW
HIDE THE HEART THAT LIES BURNING AND BLACK BELOW”
Seeing the admiration of these connoisseurs of the past for streaked tulips it is surprising we hear little or nothing of the Parrot (Tulipa turcica). In some form it must have been in existence at the time of the mania, for Parkinson, writing earlier, mentions among his “mean flowering tulips” something which appears to be it. It is classed as a subdivision of the “Yellow Fool’s Coat” tulip, and is described as “of a paler or yellowish green passed with yellow and called the Parret, with white edges.”
Striped or streaky flowers appear always to have been the florist’s ambition. Nature, in the general way, is not much addicted to the unaided production thereof; probably it is for that reason that growers have always regarded them as choice. As far back as Shakespeare’s time pied or striped flowers would seem to have been the choicest; “the favourite flowers o’ the season,” Perdita says, “are our carnations and streaked gilly’vors.” The taste of the general public on the subject may vary—a Perdita of to-day would not feel it necessary, as Shakespeare’s Perdita did, to apologise for not growing the admired streaked gillyflowers; but the taste of the florist is more faithful, he knows the art of the thing. It is he, also, who truly appreciates the double flower. Nature of herself does not very often double flowers, man invariably doubles every kind he can so soon as he takes it into cultivation. Tulips have been doubled very long, and were at one time much admired, though they are thought less of now. In England, at all events, they meet with comparatively little patronage, excepting a few dwarf sorts used for forcing and for carpet-bedding, and some large white ones which, when wide open, find a place in bouquets and floral trophies, where they look rather like peonies.
The history of the origin of the tulip as we have it is somewhat lost in mist. Robinson says Tulipa suaveolens from South Russia is now regarded as the type of the numerous early flowering tulips (Duc van Tholl, etc.), but the finer, later forms, which open in May, have all come from Tulipa Gesneriana. Some of the Dutch growers, on the other hand, regard the Gesneriana as the parent of all the garden forms; which also seems to be the opinion of some of the eighteenth-century English writers, who give Cappadocia as the home of the bulb. Various native lands have been ascribed to it: Turkey, South Russia, Asia Minor, and what is called “the Levant”—in bulb history a wide and vague locality—have all been suggested as the source from which we derived it. But from wherever it came to us, it seems likely that the original home of the bulb was Persia; from whence probably it spread to all the above countries, if not before historic times, at least very long ago. Tulips have long been known and admired in Persia; they were clearly as much a commonplace of poetry in the time of Omar Khayyám as the nightingale and the rose—
the Tulip for her wonted sup
Of Heavenly Vintage lifts her chalice up—
he writes, or we presume he writes, since the lines with very little variation appear in all editions of the Quatrains.
The tulip is said in the East to be regarded as a symbol of declared love. The writer of my grandmother’s Language of Flowers is less agreeable in his symbolism. “On account of the elegance of its form,” he says, “the beauty of its colours, but its want of fragrance and other useful qualities, this flower has been considered as an appropriate symbol of a female who possesses no other recommendation than personal charms.” Which is rather severe, and inclines one to suggest that the good man, if he really felt that a flower should possess useful qualities, might have tried this one, as was recommended in the early seventeenth century, for “cricke in the neck.” The eastern lover more poetically symbolised the condition of his love-inflamed face and burning heart by the gift to his adored of the flower: