Tulip

“ The outer scales fall, and the inner ones expand into ruddy silken sheathes that stand erect around the central cluster of leaves, not yet awake, and every branch seems to hold up a great red tulip! The sight is wonderful. Nothing looks more flower-like than these opening hickory buds, and to the unobserving passerby the transformation is nothing short of a miracle. In a day, the leaves rise and spread their delicate leaflets, lengthening and becoming smooth, as the now useless red scales fall in a shower to the ground. ”

“ I saw in glimpses the flying vision of a huge dark tulip, striped with gold, unfolding its petals on the moist bank of a dyke, and I asked myself whether a mysterious flower had really opened in the night, or whether it was but a new feeling, slowly budding, unfolding, blossoming within my heart. ”

“ Before the wallflowers have finished flowering the tulips are out, the old-fashioned “cottage tulips,” many of them, tall and with large cup-like flowers—pink and crimson, brown and yellow, showy “parrots,” and delicate mauve feathered with white, purple-black, deep maroon; such a brilliant army those tulips make, with hundreds of them in bloom at once.
Before the tulip petals have fallen, the peonies have opened out great heavy heads of flowers that can’t keep upright. ”

“ The loveliest tulip in the world—I speak only of natural flowers, not of nurserymen’s monsters—is, in my opinion, the little Bandiera di Toscana, the sword-leaved, sanguine-edged thing with the narrow bud of red and white, which opens in the sun to be a milky star. It is the loveliest, alike in colour and in habit, but one of the most fastidious. Short of lifting it, which the true gardener disdains to do, there is no certainty that it will spring up again when the time comes round. ”

“ The tulips, thus favoured by a race of genii, retained their beauty much longer than any other flowers in the garden, whilst, though contrary to their nature, as the pixies breathed over them, they became as fragrant as roses, and so delighted at all was the old woman who kept the garden that she never suffered a single tulip to be plucked from its stem. ”

“ In the radiant gems of Serendib's mines:
One tulip was found in every wreath,
That one most scorched by the summer's breath,
Whose passionate leaves with their ruby glow
Hide the heart that lies burning and black below. ”

“ The tea rose beds round the sun-dial facing these borders are sheets of white, and golden, and purple, and wine-red pansies, with the dainty red shoots of the tea roses presiding delicately in their midst. The verandah steps leading down into this pansy paradise have boxes of white, and pink, and yellow tulips all the way up on each side, and on the lawn, behind the roses, are two big beds of every coloured tulip rising above a carpet of forget-me-nots. How very much more charming different-coloured tulips are together than tulips in one colour by itself! ”

“ All the tulip-fanciers—that is to say, all the intelligent people of Europe—will feel a thrill of excitement when the rumour spreads to the four quarters of the globe: The grand black tulip is found! ‘How is it called?’ the fanciers will ask.—‘Tulipa nigra Barlœnsis!’—‘Why Barlœnsis?’—‘After its grower, Van Baerle,’ will be the answer.—‘And who is this Van Baerle?’—‘It is the same who has already produced five new tulips: the Jane, the John de Witt, the Cornelius de Witt, etc.’ Well, that is what I call my ambition. It will cause tears to no one. ”

“ I have already casually mentioned the fact that the tulip-tree's bloom is scarcely known to exist by even intelligent and well-informed Americans. Every one has heard of the mimosa, the dogwood, the red-bud, and the magnolia, but not of the tulip-bearing tree, with its incomparably bold, dashing, giantesque flower, once so common in the great woods of our Western and Middle States. ”

“ We know of the great magnolias, with blooms befitting the richness of the foliage that follows them. We see, and some of us admire, the exquisitely delicate blossoms of that splendid American tree, the tulip or whitewood. We inhale with delight the fragrance that makes notable the time when the common locust sends forth its white racemes of loveliness. ”

“ The long gold nails of his left hand
twined about a red tulip blotched with black,
a tulip shaped like a dragon's mouth
or the flames bellying about a pagoda of sandalwood.
The long gold nails of his right hand
were held together at the tips
in an attitude of discernment:
to award the tulip to the poet
of the poets that stood in a row.
(Gongs in the temples.
Men with hairy arms
climbing on the walls of the city.
They have red bows slung on their backs;
their hands grip new spearshafts.) ”

“ Every tree spreading its green leaves to the sunshine, or exposing its brown branches to the air—every flower which lends its beauty to the earth—possesses different absorbing and radiating powers. The chalice-like cup of the pure white lily floating on the lake—the variegated tulip—the brilliant anemony—the delicate rose—and the intensely coloured peony or dahlia—have each powers peculiar to themselves for drinking in the warming life-stream of the sun, and for radiating it back again to the thirsting atmosphere. ”

“ To speak to Cornelius of his tulip was an expedient resorted to by her to make him forget everything, even Rosa herself.
“Pretty well, indeed,” he said, “the coat is growing black; the sprouting has commenced; the veins of the bulb are swelling; in eight days hence, and perhaps sooner, we may distinguish the first buds of the leaves protruding—and yours, Rosa?” ”

“ Oh thrice fool Boxtel! Would any one be separated from his bulbs? Would any one leave them at Dort, when one goes to the Hague? Could one live far from one’s bulbs, when they enclose the grand black tulip? ”

“ At six the yellow hawk’s-weed [Pg 87] and dandelions look out on the way-side. At seven the water-lilies smile at us. At eight, if the day is fine, the pimpernel opens its red eyes.
At nine the marigold spreads out, and the tulip. At noon, on a hot day, you will find the tulip opened nearly flat. At eleven the Star of Bethlehem shuts up, while most of the day flowers are in their best bloom.
At twelve the lazy passion-flowers awake, and the sweet-peas have their banners opened wide. At two the wild daisies are brightest. ”

“ If grown in the free air and sunlight, it forms a heavy and beautifully-shaped top, on a smooth, bright bole, and I think it might be forced to bloom about the fifteenth year. The flowers of young, thrifty trees that have been left standing in open fields are much larger, brighter, and more graceful than those of old gnarled forest-trees, but the finest blooms I ever saw were on a giant tulip in a thin wood of Indiana. ”

“ There are to be seen the Duke of Toll tulip, the tulips called "simple precocious" in more than six hundred varieties; the "double precocious"; the late tulips, divided into unicolored, fine, superfine, and rectified; the fine, subdivided into violet, rose, and striped; then the monsters or parrots, the hybrids, the thieves; classified into a thousand orders of nobility and elegance; tinted with all the shades of color conceivable to the human mind ”

“ It is probable that, for the majority of floral amateurs, the name of the tulip is inseparable from a plant which, with the hyacinth and the lily, becomes, in the merry spring-time, the ornament of our gardens. ”

“ The laden apple tree has a pure glory of the blossoms, and another warmer, riper glory of the burden of fruit, but we think most kindly of its flowering time. Some trees maintain such a continuous show of interest and beauty that it is difficult to say on any day, "Now is this tulip or this oak at its very finest!" Again, the spring redness of the swamp maple is hardly less vivid than its mature coloring of the fall. ”

“ Let me look once more. Is what I see down there the black tulip? Quite black? Is it possible? Oh, sir, have you seen it? It must have specks, it must be imperfect, it must only be dyed black; ah, if I were there! ”

“ Fancy to yourself two enthusiasts sitting under a magnificent liriodendron (pity it is that common usage should have degraded the glory of our forests into a poplar; it is no poplar, and even the name tulip-tree has a hybrid sound, half Norman half Anglo-Saxon; “it follows not,” says holy but funny Fuller, “that the foreign tulip is better than the rose because some usurping fancies would prefer it;”) fancy, I say, gentle Alice, and gentle reader, two students of old books under a lofty tree, on a knoll in sight of a broad Southern river, with the bank all bespread with volumes. ”

“ What would the world say, when it heard that the black tulip was found, that it existed, and that it was the prisoner Van Baerle who had found it?
How Cornelius would have spurned the offer of his liberty in exchange for his tulip!
Day came, without any news; the tulip was not yet in flower.
The day passed as the night. Night came, and with it Rosa, joyous and cheerful as a bird.
“Well?” asked Cornelius.
“Well, all is going on prosperously. This night, without any doubt, our tulip will be in flower.” ”

“ If one were to explain on paper what a flower is like, to a man who had never seen anything but trees, he would draw a tulip. They are unevolved. There is raw green in the tulip yellows; the reds are like a fresh wound, and the whites are either leaden or clayey.... ”

“ The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees which I had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance. ”

“ Never had the love of the prisoner been more sincere than at the time at which we are now arrived, when in the contest between the black tulip and Rosa, the tulip had had to yield to her the first and foremost place in Cornelius’ heart. ”

“ And the woods was real splendid,--great tall tulip-trees, as high as a steeple and round as a quill, without any sort o' branches ever so fur up, and the whole top full of the yeller tulips and the queer snipped-lookin' shiny leaves, till they looked like great bow-pots on sticks; then there's lots of other great trees, only they're all mostly spindled up in them woods. ”

“ The tulips grew daily brighter in color and larger in size, and they gave out a delicious perfume like that of roses. They began, too, to bloom all the year round. And every night the little Fairy mothers caressed their babies and rocked them to sleep in the flower-cups.
The day came when the good old woman died, and the tulip-bed was torn up by folks who did not know about the Fairies, and parsley was planted there instead of the flowers. But the parsley withered, and so did all the other plants in the garden, and from that time nothing would grow there. ”

“ And set the herring a-soak in brine—
⁠But now, little tulip, sleep!
A Dream-One comes to button the eyes
⁠That wearily droop and blink,
While the old mill buffets the frowning skies
⁠And scolds at the stars that wink ”

“ Tulip, tū′lip, n. a genus of bulbous plants of the order Liliaceæ, with over forty species, having highly-coloured bell-shaped flowers.—adj. Tū′lip-eared, prick-eared, as a dog.—ns. Tulipomā′nia, a craze for the cultivation of tulips; Tū′lip-tree, a large North American tree, having tulip-like flowers; Tū′lip-wood, the soft, fine, straight-grained wood of the tulip-tree. [O. Fr. tulipe, tulippe, tulipan—Turk. tulbend, a turban.]
Tulle, tōōl, n. a delicate kind of thin silk network fabric of a very open structure used for the trimmings of ladies' dresses, and also for caps and veils. ”

“ The tulip tree is one of the largest and tallest trees in our American forests. It has long been admired for its beauty in the summer, and a study of its winter buds and stems discloses the fact that it is equally interesting and beautiful when its foliage has gone. ”

“ The poor little tulip drooped its head and pined. It is very, very hard to be thought ugly and different; and harder still not to be wanted. So the tulip drooped and faded and dropped its petals long before any of the other flowers in the bed.
“And when the lady found the red and yellow petals lying on the ground she exclaimed:—‘Why, how odd that this tulip should have died first. I always thought that those common, hardy varieties lasted longest!’
“Her little girl picked up one of the scattered petals and stroked it. ”

“ Of gay tulips, which were amongst his special favourites—“But indeed this flower, above many other, deserveth his true commendations and acceptance with all lovers of these beauties, both for the stately aspect and for the admirable varietie of colour, that daily doe arise in them,”—and of which he had a collection such as would be the glory of any garden—the tulip of Caffa, the greater red Bolonia tulip, the tulip of Candie, the tulip of Armenia, the Fool’s Coat tulip, the Cloth of Silver tulip and others too numerous to mention. ”

“ The culture of the tulip, as a florist’s flower, requires unremitting attention and care; but for common garden purposes, the tulip will be found hardier, and less liable to injury from insects, &c., than most other flowers. Where tulips are grown in a regular bed, the ground should be dug out to the depth of twenty inches, or two feet. ”