Dutch Bulbs and Gardens

by Una L. Silberrad; Sophie Lyall

After it has been eighteen months in the ground the bulb has gained a certain consistency; it is now composed of four tunics, each of which encloses it entirely, the outside tunic appearing brown and dry (as if the drying process had begun, for this outer one has to shrivel away in the earth next year). The leaf-shoot still looks thin and round like a rush, but it holds itself straight, and has gathered strength since last year. The second year (about the time it has to be taken up) it has lost its outside tunic, but has still three left, completely surrounding it, but within the inmost envelope the base of the leaf-shoot or fan (which now shows a double shoot) is already spreading and forming in the centre of the bulb a tunic, like the tunics of the proper (grown) bulb; that is to say, it wraps it only two-thirds of the way round its circumference. The roots have now strengthened. The following year they are yet stronger. The bulb casts off all its binders, the early tunics which enveloped it completely (like a bandage). After this it enters into its mature state, the leaves, instead of clinging together like a round rush, separate, slowly detaching themselves and taking the shape they are to preserve to the end, though every year they increase considerably.

From the time the bulb loses its first closed tunics it is able to produce its flower, which it never can do while it remains with closed tunics. The first flower has a long feeble stem, which bears one, two, or three small blossoms, but these are enough to show the sort of flower it is going to be. If it is single it will remain a single always, neither will its colour vary again, and it can be classed among the red, blue, or white of its kind, but it will grow more perfect and improve in height, size, and colour. If the flower turns out to be double, the growers are delighted, and then they will spare no pains in developing its beauty, for they know not what degree of perfection it may yet attain.

When the bulb is three years old (having a treble shoot, and having lost its last completely enveloping tunic) it possesses only the ordinary tunics, which are formed by the expansion at the base of the leaves (these envelop only two-thirds of the bulb).

The bulb, when four years old (having developed more perfect leaves and begun to produce flowers), is composed of about twenty tunics.

If the flower, during the fifth year, continues to develop and shows to advantage in colour, form, etc., the growers’ hopes rise higher still, but they cannot tell even yet if the flower will fulfil its great promise.

A bulb which has grown too rapidly will sometimes throw out young bulbs (or offshoots) at four or five years old, but never before it has once, during the course of its life, put forth a flower. This fact is important to remember in regard to observations to be made later on, on the subject of vegetation.

In the ordinary course of nature the bulb does not arrive at its final state of perfection until its seventh year. The grower delights to note its yearly growth in grace and beauty, till at length it becomes précieuse, then he is fully repaid his care, and the kind is for ever fixed, and will never vary again, and it will produce young bulbs which will, in their turn, produce again, and all will perfectly resemble their first parent bulb (though it has happened very seldom indeed that flowers have changed in colour, but this will be explained).

Growers call the flowers they obtain by raising from seed “Conquests.” They share and exchange among themselves these seeds of promise, and sell to each other the third quarter or half of the bulb productions, which, however, should not be parted with unless there are a certain number of young bulbs to be divided. The prices they pay for these invaluable seedlings would astonish an amateur. They enhance the value of the bulb, for which the fixed price is sometimes above 1000 florins. Some are worth as much again. Growers usually keep notes of the origin and date of bulbs.

Some hundred years ago double hyacinths were thought little of; they were almost unknown. Swertius, in 1620, gives a list of about forty kinds of hyacinths; none of them were double. The gardens of George Voorhelm belonged also to his grandfather, who had already tried raising hyacinths from seed, and whenever he made a Conquest, Pierre Voorhelm would reject any which seemed out of the ordinary, or out of proportion to the rest of his flowers, for in those days they took a pride in the formal and regular arrangements of their flower-beds. He took care, especially, to destroy double hyacinths when they appeared, without waiting to see what they might become if they were allowed to develop. He was only anxious to keep flowers which promised seed. It is certain that double flowers have not a seed-bearing quality; they are not formed for maturing the seed enclosed in the ovary, so that any flower without this particular good quality did not fail to be rejected. No one took the least pleasure in the idea of a double hyacinth; it was rather regarded as a monster (or freak of nature), just as at the present day nobody cares for a double tulip.

Pierre Voorhelm fell ill, and being quite unable to visit or attend to his plants until the hyacinth season was nearly over, he happened then to see a double hyacinth (the kind is now lost) which had been forgotten, and had not been thrown away as usual; it was very small, and he only liked it because it seemed to match very well with the single ones—so he cultivated it with the rest and obtained bulbs from it. He found it was much admired by amateurs, who were ready to pay a good price for it. So he took to cultivating the double as well as the single, and soon began to be as anxious to find them among “Conquests” as before he was to get rid of them.