TULIPA, TULIP, in botany: A genus of plants belonging to the class of hexandria, and order of monogynia; and in the natural system ranging under the 10th order Coronaria. The corolla is hexapetalous and campanulated, and there is no style. The species of this genus are four; the sylvestris, or Italian yellow tulip, a native of the south of Europe; the gesneriana, or common tulip, a native of the Levant; the beyniana, or cape tulip, a native of the Cape of Good Hope; and the biflora.
1. The sylvestris, or wild European tulip, hath an oblong bulbous root, sending up long narrow spear-shaped leaves; and a slender stalk, supporting at top a small yellow flower, nodding on one side, having acute petals.
2. The gesneriana, Gesner's Turkey tulip of Cappadocia, or common garden-tulip, hath a large, oblong, tunicated, solid, bulbous root, covered with a brown skin, sending up long oval spear-shaped leaves; an upright round stalk, from half a foot to a yard high, garnished with a few leaves, and its top crowned with a large bell-shaped erect hexapetalous flower, of almost all colours and variegations in the different varieties.
This tulip, and its vast train of varieties, is the sort so generally cultivated for the ornament of our gardens, and so much admired by all for its great variety and beautiful appearance: It grows freely in the open ground in any common soil of a garden, and proves a very great decoration to the beds and borders of the pleasure-ground for six weeks or two months in spring, by different plantings of early and late sorts; planting the principal part in autumn, and the rest towards Christmas, and in January or February. The autumn plantings will come earliest into bloom, and flower the strongest: and the others will succeed them in flowering. In summer, when the flowering is past, and the leaves and stalks assume a state of decay, the bulbs of the choicest varieties are generally taken up, the offsets separated, and the whole cleaned from filth; then put up to dry till October or November, and then planted again for the future year's bloom.
Of this species, which is the florist's delight, the varieties may be divided into two principal classes, viz. 1. Early or dwarf spring tulips (præcoce). 2. Late-flowering tall tulips (serotina). 1. Early tulips. The early tulips are among florists distinguished by the appellation of præcoce (early), because they flower early in the spring, a month or more before the others; are much shorter stalked, and the flowers smaller; but are in greater reputation for their early bloom and their gay lively colours, both of self-colours, and broken into flaked variegations; such as reds, crimson, scarlet, carnation, violets, purples, yellow, &c. with flowers of each, edged and flaked with red, yellow, and white, in many diversities. 2. Late-flowering common tulips.—This class is denominated late-flowering, and by the florists called serotines, because they blow later in the spring, a month or more, than the præcoce, i. e. not coming into flower before the end of April, May, and June. They are all of tall growth, supporting large flowers, and furnish an almost endless variety in the vast diversity of colours, after they break from whole blowers into variegations and stripes, exceeding all others of the tulip kind in beauty and elegance of flower.
Both these species of tulips are hardy perennials, durable in root, or at least, although the old bulb decays annually, it perpetuates its species by off-sets, and is annual in leaf and stalk; which rising from the bulb early in the spring, arrives to a flowering state in April and May. All the varieties are succeeded by plenty of ripe seed in July and August, contained in an oblong capsule of three cells, having the seeds placed on each other in double rows. By the seeds many new varieties may be raised, which however will not attain a flowering state till they are seven or eight years old; and after that will require two or three years or more to break into variegations, when the approved varieties may be marked, and increased by off-sets of the root, as directed in their propagation.
The colours in greatest estimation in variegated tulips, are the blacks, golden yellows, purple-violets, rose, and vermilion, each of which being variegated various ways; and such as are striped with three different colours distinct and unmixed, with strong regular streaks, but with little or no tinge of the breeder, may be called the most perfect tulips. It is rare to meet with a tulip possessing all these properties.
As to the manner of obtaining this wonderful variety of colours in tulips, it is often accomplished by nature alone, but is sometimes assisted and forwarded by some simple operations of art; such as that, in the first place, when the feeding bulbs of the whole blower or breeder are arrived to full size, and have flowered once, to transplant them into beds of any poor dry barren soil, in order that by a defect of nutriment in the earth the natural luxuriance of the plant may be checked, and cause a weakness in their general growth, whereby they generally in this weakened or infirm state gradually change and break out into variegations, some the first year, others not till the second or third; and according as they are thus broke, they should be planted in beds of good earth.
Another method to assist nature in effecting the marvellous work of breaking the breeding tulips into diversified colours, is to make as great a change as possible in the soil; if they were this year in a light poor soil, plant them the next in a rich garden mould, and another year in a compost of different earths and dung; or transplant them from one part of the garden to another, or into different gardens, &c. or from one country to another; all of which contributes in assisting nature in producing this desirable diversity of colours and variegations.
The double tulip is also a variety of the common tulip,
and is very beautiful, though not in such estimation among the florists as the common single variegated sorts, not possessing such a profusion of variegations in the colours and regularity of stripes: they however exhibit an elegantly ornamental appearance, as they rise with an upright, tallish, firm stem, crowned with a very large double flower composed of numerous petals, multiplied in several series one within another like a double peony, but far more beautiful in their diversity of colours, variegations, and stripes of white and red, yellow and red, &c. so that they highly deserve culture, both in beds alone near the other sorts to increase their variety, also to plant in patches about the borders, in assemblage with the late variegated tulips, as they blow nearly about the same time, i. e. April and May.
Tulip-roots are sold in full collection, consisting of numerous varieties, at most of the nurseries and seedsmen, who both propagate them themselves by off-sets and seed, and import vast quantities annually from Holland; the Dutch being famous for raising the grandest collections of the finest tulips, and other bulbous flowers, in the greatest perfection, for the supply of almost all the other European gardens; distinguishing every variety in their vast collections by some pompous name or other, arranged in regular catalogues, charging prices in proportion to their estimation; which formerly was so great, among the Hollanders themselves in particular, that there are accounts of a single root being sold for from 2000 to 5500 guilders; but some time ago they were more plentiful, and were sold at from 5s. or 10s. to so many pounds per hundred, and even per root for very scarce capital sorts.