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Title: Dutch Bulbs and Gardens
Author: Lyall, Sophie, Silberrad, Una Lucy
Language: English
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DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
GARDENS
OF ENGLAND
BY E. T. COOK
WITH 20 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR BY
BEATRICE PARSONS
A. AND C. BLACK,
SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
AGENTS
AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
AUSTRALASIA THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
27 RICHMOND STREET WEST, TORONTO
INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: HET LOO]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DUTCH BULBS
AND GARDENS
PAINTED BY
MIMA NIXON
DESCRIBED BY
UNA SILBERRAD AND SOPHIE LYALL
[Illustration]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1909
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
MY DEAREST FRIEND
GERTRUDE CROFTON
IN MEMORY OF HAPPY DAYS SPENT IN HOLLAND
WHICH WE SAW TOGETHER FOR
THE FIRST TIME
MIMA NIXON.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
Miss Nixon wishes me to present her humble duty and thanks to Her
Majesty, the Queen of the Netherlands, for graciously honouring her
with the permission to make drawings of Her Majesty’s Summer Palace and
Gardens at Het Loo.
Miss Nixon also wishes me to thank His Excellency Baron Sistema van
Grövestins for his kindness in procuring for her the privilege of
access to the Royal Gardens at Het Loo, and to thank the Rt. Hon. Sir
Horace Rumbold, Bart., P.C., G.C.B., G.C.M.G., for his kind help.
Her thanks are also due to Mr. W. H. Wind, Her Majesty’s Head Gardener
at Het Loo; to Miss van der Laan, Bennebroek; and to Messrs. Tubergen,
Kersten, Krelager, Roozen, and the other growers at Haarlem.
I wish to thank Mr. Thomas Hoog of Haarlem, who helped me in the
compiling of the following pages by supplying much valuable
information, which I trust I have not too greatly mishandled.
UNA L. SILBERRAD.
_March 1, 1909._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
BY UNA L. SILBERRAD
PAGE
CHAPTER I
ON GETTING THERE 1
CHAPTER II
CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 28
CHAPTER III
HYACINTH OR IRIS? 47
CHAPTER IV
SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 68
CHAPTER V
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 83
CHAPTER VI
BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 104
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDICES
BY SOPHIE LYALL
PAGE
I
HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH 121
CENTURY
II
THE TULIP TRADE, FROM DE KONING’S “HISTORY OF 168
HAARLEM” (1635)
III
THE HYACINTH TRADE, FROM DE KONING’S “TAFEREEL 171
DER STAD HAARLEM” (1808)
INDEX 173
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Het Loo _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. The “Berceau,” Het Loo 8
3. Palace Gardens, Het Loo 16
4. Azaleas, Het Loo 24
5. The Return of the Storks 28
6. The Promise of Spring 32
7. A Crocus Field 40
8. Hyacinths scattered on the Sand 48
9. “In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and 56
white, like sapphire, pearl, and rich
embroidery”
10. Spanish Irises 64
11. A Bulb Farm near Overveen 68
12. “They spring, they bud, they blossome fresh 72
and faire, and decke the world with their rich
pompous showes”
13. Bulb Time, Haarlem 78
14. Tulips in their Prime 84
15. “Here are tulips for you—white, for the 88
bridal or the burial”
16. “Whose leaves with their crimson glow Hide 94
the heart that lies burning and black below”
17. Darwin Tulips 100
18. A Bulb House 104
19. Flower-Market, Haarlem 108
20. Hyacinth Flowers going to Market 112
21. A Bulb-Grower’s Garden 116
22. “When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint 128
the laughing soil”
23. A Boatload of Fragrance 144
24. A Dutch Garden in Spring 160
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DUTCH BULBS & GARDENS
CHAPTER I
ON GETTING THERE
Undoubtedly the way to go to the Bulb Gardens of Holland is to go the
way by which the bulbs come to England. Or at least follow that route
to a certain extent—the bulbs usually make part of the inland journey
in their own country by canal boat, neither a very possible nor a very
comfortable proceeding for the average traveller. But for the rest,
their route is the one for those who have leisure and who want to get
to the gardens in the most suitable way.
One boards a little Dutch steamer at the Tower Stairs, a steamer that
seems in the greatest hurry to be off, but never is, though everyone
and everything, including the steam escape, are very busy till it
finally shrieks itself under the Tower Bridge and so down the river.
These steamers are sometimes slightingly referred to as cargo boats,
and certainly the bulbs, in their clean white packing cases, come to
England that way; and when they are not coming, Dutch cheeses in
quantity and other things take their place. But the passenger
accommodation has much to recommend it. I remember a large deck cabin,
much larger and lighter than a good deal of the first-class
accommodation on the great Indian and Australian liners. I remember
sheets of stout Low Country linen, reminiscent in their scent of
woodruff of the Spanish mahogany dower chests where housewives lay up
their gear with the aromatic herb. I remember a snug place with a
swinging lamp and lockers, more suggestive of the cabin of the
“Schooner _Hesperus_,” when “the skipper had taken his little daughter
to bear him company,” than the saloon of a cross-Channel steamer. It is
true the food is Dutch, but if, as not infrequently happens, one is
sole passenger, one has it when and where one pleases, which is a
compensation. It is true, too, there is no stewardess, and not often
anyone who speaks much English on board, and that the journey takes
rather long, but these are trifles.
By choosing the right tide, one drops down the river in the afternoon,
in itself an interesting and instructive thing; spends the night at
sea, which if one has to go to sea seems the best time to spend there;
and, if it is summer, sees the piers of Ymuenden when sea and sky look
like the two halves of a pink pearl in the dawn. After Ymuenden one is
in the Great Canal of Amsterdam, and it is a bad sailor who can then
find reason to object to the motion or vibration. The latter appears
principally to be connected with the steam whistle, which gives notice
of approach to railway bridges, and the former to be rather conspicuous
by its absence. Children driving goats to pasture and early astir
pedestrians seem as if they could easily outdistance the very steady
and matronly pace of the little steamer. But it is quite suitable,
everything else on the water moves at the same pace, which agreeably
allows of greeting and conversation with occasional sister craft, even
allows of learning what they have for breakfast on board. And no doubt
it is necessary,—the banks which shut the canal from the land, usually
lying below the water-level, are very soft; even as it is, dredgers,
those most fascinating craft of childhood, are eternally at work.
It appears to be the cautious custom of the country not to open the
swing railway bridges within twenty minutes of the scheduled time of a
train’s coming. As the trains do not invariably keep time, there are
occasionally long waits for the steamers, which, being privately owned,
wait the good pleasure of the State-owned railways. But it does not
very much matter, there is the better chance to look around and see the
country, which is so very flat here that there is a great deal of it to
be seen; and so wide and peaceful that it puts to rest the sense of
hurry. One who goes to the bulb gardens does well to put that sense to
rest, for, seen hastily, run through in a few hours or a day at most,
they produce little but an impression of sheets of gorgeous colour,
which might possibly have been more beautiful had they been otherwise
arranged. Time is wanted to see them, the leisureliness which regards
them as gardens rather than as so many acres of scarlet, blue, or
white, and the opportunity of knowing a few of the flowers
individually. It is for this reason, among others, and as a suitable
preparation to the leisurely observation, that a man does well to go to
the gardens the way the bulbs come; and does well to possess his soul
in patience, while the Dutch captain attends the pleasure of the man
who minds the bridge, and while the steamer creeps up to Amsterdam.
The national virtue of Holland, the Holland one sees from the canal, is
industry; not energy exactly, certainly not ‘hustle’ or any kindred
thing, but industry, coupled with a neatness which keeps even the
ditches tidy, and does not allow of that inalienable right of the
English rural dweller, the garden rubbish-heap. The Dutch strike one as
more industrious than anything else in the world, unless perhaps ants,
to a community of which, it must be admitted, they bear some
resemblance. The national ideal, at least in the bulb district, is
cleanliness. About the highest praise to be bestowed on anything is
that it is clean. A fine tulip bulb in its shining yellow-brown skin is
extolled as “so clean”; the curious sandy soil in which the bulbs grow
is spoken of with pride as always clean; the great compliment to be
paid to a bulb barn is that it is clean. Possibly one of the advantages
of the growers’ work is that it is clean.
It is, I believe, customary to speak of Amsterdam as the Venice of the
North. For one who has not seen Venice it is impossible to draw a
comparison, but it seems difficult to imagine much resemblance between
them—beyond the fact that both possess canals and houses and history.
Amsterdam somehow reminds one of Dickens’ novels, it is immensely
interesting, rather crowded, real, busy, homely, and genuine; not
suggestive of devastating passions or high romance exactly, but very
comfortable and wholesome. One would expect it to dine early, to attend
to business, and have a substantial supper. This is not meant to imply
that everyone in Amsterdam does these things, only that that is the
general impression produced by the town. One can perfectly understand
Amsterdam being the diamond mart of the world; but one cannot imagine
an Amsterdamer ruining himself to buy a parure for some fair woman’s
caprice; or an Amsterdamess jeopardising her immortal soul to secure
some special jewel. One no more expects it than one expects the Jews,
who are the art dealers and bijou connoisseurs of the world, to be the
producers of these same articles. Not that one thinks the less of them
on that account. Artists and romancists and subjects of the grand
passion, though no doubt adding to the joy of nations, make indifferent
folk to live with; the sturdy man of business and the shrewd and kindly
citizen might be a deal better for everyday use—and most lives consist
principally of such usings. In Amsterdam one can perfectly understand
the famous struggle with Spain and some of the difficulties of the Boer
War. But one cannot help feeling that, just as the French Revolution
and the ’45 are not in the nature of the people, neither are the ways
and doings of Renaissance Italy.
From Amsterdam one goes by train to Haarlem, capital of the bulb
country; and if one holds any hearsay opinions as to the unexcitable
nature of the Dutch people, one corrects them on the way. Phlegmatic in
big matters they may be, but in small ones—No. It is only necessary to
observe them seeing each other off at the railway station or starting
one of their not too expeditious trains to realise that. The excitement
of getting the people in, of arranging seats when in, closing windows
and placing the inordinate quantity of packages everyone seems to
carry, is astonishing to the Englishman. So too, rather, is the amount
of help and service required by the exceedingly capable Holland women.
A Holland lady never seems to think of opening a carriage door for
herself; one imagines she would almost sooner go past the desired
station than do so, though such a catastrophe could not well happen,
for, in good time, she uplifts her voice and excitedly calls upon all
and sundry to let her out, if no one has, unasked, come to do it. She
never attempts to board the train without at least one assistant; if
she be stout, two. In the latter case it is not altogether unnecessary,
for the steps are steep, the door narrow, and the stations, like others
on the Continent, guiltless of platforms; the difficulties of getting a
really fat and baggage-laden lady in are considerable. Inside the train
she is very helpless about her belongings and prepared to cast herself
upon the kindness of any or all men; outside Mevrouw is as capable as
any woman in the world. The peculiarity probably arises from the fact
that Holland, in some respects, is still rather mid-Victorian; the
women, at all events, cling to the ideal of feminine helplessness in
public places which was counted becoming in that era.
Haarlem, it is said, is behind the rest of Holland; with what truth I
do not know, I know no other part half so well. It is a town not quite
like any other, so quiet and bright, so small scale busy with its own
concerns, so essentially cosy. There is there a feeling of attending to
your own business, and the price of meat mattering more than the
Messina earthquake (as, indeed, it is conceivable it may to a good many
people); and also a feeling of comfort and the settled home life; the
hearth swept and the children coming down to tea. The whole town is
intersected by canals, the which, always busy and doing away with a
good deal of road traffic, may help to produce the quiet, bright, yet
active feeling. The houses, many of them, are right on to the street,
with windows low, so that one can hardly help seeing in and having a
momentary and intimate glimpse of the lives of the inhabitants. This
may help to give the comfortable homely feeling—it is hard to say,
really impossible to say, what produces and wherein lies the spirit and
atmosphere of a town.
[Illustration: The “BERCEAU,” HET LOO]
At Haarlem station it is customary for those who have come in the bulb
flowering time of April and May to hire a carriage and go the route
prescribed by the driver; thus, without leaving their seats, seeing the
gardens, and carrying away the impression of a patchwork quilt of
flowers. An arrangement of foursquare bits of colour, separated from
each other by as yet scantily-leafed hedges, and, here and there,
intersected by pieces of ground resting from bulb culture, and either
bare or green with vegetables, which, from sheer exhaustion, if not
contrariness, the eye is inclined to prefer to the gorgeous flower
patches. But that is not the way to see the bulb gardens. It is better,
for one who has leisure, to go first in early summer, when the great
mass of flowers is over, and only the later and fewer bulbs are in
bloom; when there is opportunity to know them as individuals, and
appreciate the exquisite contrast of iris colours and green hedges, and
to see to full advantage ranunculus, and the early blooming gladioli,
and the hundred varieties of the lily tribe. To see them, as the
unaccustomed eye cannot see them when it first meets flowers in sheets,
field after field of colour. In June, then, come to Haarlem; there take
a tram, and do not forget that the chances are some one in the vehicle
will understand English very well indeed. And when the tram has come as
near as may be to the destination, walk the rest of the way to the
house of the grower. To see the bulb flowers without the grower is not
to see them. On arrival at the house there is usually a meal first. It
is always mid-day “coffee-drinking” in my memories, and there is never
much talk of the flowers at it; questions, rather, about people in
England and Holland, and perhaps about fashions and food, and the
length of the winter, and the health of Mevrouw. After that there is a
rest, during which Mevrouw offers cordials and home-made liquors of a
most excellent order, and den Heer finishes important letters. After
that, walk forth to the flowers.
The gardens are sometimes rather far from the house, and often not very
near each other, one man owning or renting several at considerable
distances apart. Some of the younger men use bicycles to get from one
to the other, some of the elder tricycles, which seems a doubtful
expedient, seeing the nature of the roads. One old man who used the
latter method, and wished to try the former, wept tears of sheer rage
when his wife and family interfered, for the sake of his safety, to
prevent him from learning to ride the swifter machine. And, being Dutch
not French, he was not content with weeping, but proceeded to frustrate
their well-meant interference. Of an evening, when by his own account
he was late working in the office, he took his son’s bicycle to a bulb
barn, and, by the light of a lantern, rode it up and down the centre
aisle. He damaged himself a good deal from time to time, and the
bicycle somewhat; but he was not discovered. He explained his own
injuries in various ingenious, if not strictly truthful, ways; and of
the bicycle’s he was never suspected, although he showed himself
generous in subscribing to the cost of repairing the mysteriously
caused damage. He spent most of the evenings of one winter in this way.
It took him all that time to at all master the machine. He was less apt
than determined, and, had he not been bent on proving his independence,
he might have given up. But he was bent, very seriously—one knows the
concentration with which he ground up and down the barn aisle night
after night, peering with short-sighted eyes for unseen obstacles among
the lantern shadows, and colliding with the same corner at the same
time each turn. In the spring he bought a second-hand bicycle. He was
too good a man of business to risk the price of a new one on his own
proficiency as a rider on the roads; moreover, he wanted a machine with
solid tyres, he preferred the substantiality. On his purchase he rode
proudly to his own door, and dismounted in time to save himself from
falling off at his wife’s feet. He is now occasionally to be seen on
the roads, a proud and perspiring man. It is true, he does not ride his
bicycle very much when his wife is not about to protest and object, but
he is always (verbally at least) an enthusiast about it. It is his
opinion that the roads of Holland are the most excellent in the world
for cycles. They are, he says, no matter what the weather, always so
clean. That is true, clean they are; but good!—it is a matter of
opinion. There is a foot-wide brick track in the centre, deep sand
everywhere else; at least such are the roads to the bulb gardens I know
best.
But in den Heer’s case part of the bulb land was round the house. He
had other farther away. Land so near Haarlem is too valuable for a man
to own all he wants there. It would, of course, be to this near garden
he would go when the important letters were finished and the visitor
rested. It is no impressionist picture of colour splashes to be got
there, but detailed, like an old Dutch painting. You do not see the
stretches of blue and yellow iris, you see the flowers. They are
individuals to den Heer, not masses. He knows them, or, at least,
representatives among them. He stops before the long strip of new
iris—mixed sorts raised from seed, in the hope of producing some
variety worth saving and propagating.
“Ah, Ah!” he will purr as he touches some one among them, “here we have
a good flower, the violet—the true violet—observe the eye.”
You observe the flower, and the three plush spots on the lower petals,
and do not perceive it to be very different, or, to tell the truth,
very superior to anything you have seen before. But he perceives it and
has already marked the plant.
“This we will multiply,” he says, “in time you will see this in the
catalogues. You shall give it a name.”
You give one, the name of the boat that brought you to Holland perhaps,
or perhaps “Amethyst,” in honour of the purple tone which den Heer
perceives, although you do not. And then you turn to admire another
flower, a perfect blue, which seems very beautiful. But the chances are
your admiration is misplaced.
“It is nothing,” den Heer says with a shrug, at the same time cutting
the bloom for you with the smallest and sharpest of knives. “There are
many as fine, many better, the _Darling_, the _Solfatare_, both more
blue. Did this, now, show any rosy markings, that would be something
indeed in _Iris hispanica_.”
It no doubt would, though possibly not an improvement in the eyes of
the uninitiated. If you are of this opinion, you do not say so, but
follow den Heer among the flowers, noticing how one here and there is
marked out for the honour of multiplication. A somewhat remote honour,
which will not bring them into catalogue fame yet; may not bring them
at all. For this reason the naming of the purple iris is hardly
important, little more than a graceful compliment to the namer. The
chances are rather in favour of the flower not being found worthy of
founding a family to use the name; and even if it were, like the
thousands of babies daily named, there is small likelihood of its
achieving great fame.
Beyond the irises, divided by a high hornbeam screen, there are white
gladioli; from the distance little but an irregular white blur in a
small field they do not fill; but near spotless flowers, bending like a
bevy of shy girls at their first communion, or novices waiting their
bridal with the Church. Den Heer will stop to tell you which is the
“true Bride,” the perfect snow-white flower with no suspicion of purple
on the stamen tips or faintly tinging the depth of the throat. He will
tell you how the beautiful _Bride_, no matter how carefully grown and
selected, has a tendency in these faint colour stains to show its
remote ancestor, the ugly little magenta flower of the Canary Islands.
He will also pick out for you the full flower head, twenty florets on a
stalk, five open at once, a perfection by no means always obtained.
By the white gladioli is a great patch of the taller and later blooming
sort, not yet fully out, but already showing hints of their gorgeous
colours, salmon and scarlet, pale yellow and delicate mauve. All the
many tints to be found among them since the discovery of varieties at
the Cape (where, by the way, the corms are eaten by the Hottentots) has
allowed of endless crossings and hybridisings, and has removed them in
beauty far from the few indigenous European sorts. Those of which
Parkinson wrote with the satisfaction of one catching a famous rival
tripping: “Gerard mistaketh the French kind for the Italian.”
In the ground which surrounds the grower’s house are to be found the
choice varieties. This ground is not often divided into big fields
devoted to some one or two kinds of bulbs only. It is more usually
given up to smaller patches of special flowers, or new flowers, things
which need care, or watching, or else are experiments. It is here there
is likely to have been first seen green ixias (_Ixia viridiflora_) in
bloom, and the strange sound of their dry rustling heard,—the sound
which, taken in conjunction with their colour, the blue-green of
mildew, is somehow suggestive of Jeremiah’s valley of dry bones. Here,
too, will be Californian tulips (_Calochortus_), and the rare great
iris of Persia (_Iris Susiana_), and other things in their season;
always much more than can be seen before Mevrouw, standing at the house
door, claps her hands to tell that dinner is ready.
[Illustration: PALACE GARDENS, HET LOO]
To go to the more distant gardens, it is well to choose the morning, if
it is spring, the time of the bulbs which have made Holland famous. A
windy time, this, in Holland, one well understands then the advantage
of pollarding the trees. Also one understands the necessity of the high
hedges or screens which separate the garden into squarish patches. They
are sometimes of beech, more often hornbeam, they quite enclose the
piece of land, only at each corner there is a square-cut gateless gap,
which makes a large area, seen from a distance, suggestive of a
gigantic maze. In hyacinth time they are, of course, quite bare of
leaves, unless one counts a few yellow ones of last year clinging here
and there, a beautiful sombre background to the astonishing vivid
delicacy of the flowers. It is a wonderful sight, more especially when
one stands among them—rows of wax pink hyacinths, each perfect and each
set in its circle of bright green leaves; behind, the purple brown of
the bare hedge; beyond, a glimpse of blue flowers, or pale yellow, or
still more dazzling white. A sight wonderful when one stands among
them, but also to be appreciated afterwards from a distance—preferably
from the windows of the gardener’s little house. If the wind is very
cold and den Heer is going to be very long in conference with the
gardener, it is possible that, after a certain time, one can admire
them more from within over such coffee as the gardener’s wife makes. A
cup of such coffee, a footstool filled with hot charcoal, and a chair
in the most shining kitchen possible to conceive of, are not to be
despised, while den Heer, outside, talks about the cutting down of the
hyacinth flowers.
To us who grow hyacinths in pots or in beds, where the failure of one
is like a missing front tooth, the cutting down of the flowers seems
almost a ruthless thing. We admit that it must be necessary, or it
would not be done, but we feel that the men who do it ought to have
some compunction about it. Though why they should be expected to feel
it more than the mowers who cut the equally beautiful flowers in the
English hay-fields does not appear. The bulbs in Holland are grown for
their roots as much as are carrots and potatoes, as much as the grass
is grown for hay. It is the poet, not the mower, who sighs over the
flowers of the grass that perish; and the poet, if he happens to own
hay-fields, does not hesitate to give orders for the cutting at the
proper time. And the mower, if he has an eye for beauty, admires the
flowers, even though he says nothing about it, and cuts them down to
order. A boat-load of cut hyacinth flowers, with their beauty, and
their scent, and their cutting off at highest perfection may touch the
imagination more than a four-ounce bottle of heavy red-brown oil, which
represents the life and fragrance of half a square mile of jasmine
flowers. But it should not, if the jasmine was only grown that the oil
might be made, the hyacinths equally are only grown that their roots
may be fine and saleable; and when their well-being demands the cutting
of the flowers there is no sacrifice in their going, for to this end
they grew and matured and came to flower.
There is yet one other way of going to see a bulb garden, for those who
are fortunate enough to know a grower who owns one at a so situated
spot. Den Heer owned one, and on a June afternoon we went to it, his
son, den Heer Karel, and I. We started from a small quay in Haarlem,
travelling by boat—a boat not so much bigger than a barge, which
carried a miscellaneous cargo, and a captain and crew—two souls
inclusive. Captain was clean, crew rather dirty, for a Dutchman, but
both very polite. They raised their hats on the slightest
provocation,—it would really have saved trouble if they had kept them
off altogether while I was about, and shook hands most formally with
all quayside friends before casting off. There was one other passenger,
an old peasant woman, with a beautiful head-dress with spiral gold
wires standing out over her ears. She hugged a small goat all the
voyage, as if she were afraid of its jumping overboard, or eating the
green stuff which was part of her luggage, though, since she sat on
that and she was a voluminous person, it is difficult to see how it
could have managed to do so. There was not much to sit on besides one’s
luggage if one had any, or that part of the cargo which was smooth
enough and firm enough to provide a seat. It is possible den Heer Karel
did not quite like the expedition. He had a feeling that it “was
singular,” and if there is one thing a Dutchman does not like, it is to
look singular. Maybe it is this clinging to the conventionalities,
which we have rather lost, which gives one the feeling of having gone
back some decades when one is among them.
But den Heer Karel was goodness itself, and, without a word of protest,
made the expedition. We steamed down the canal—a narrow canal lying in
the old part of the town, where old purple-red houses, with green
shutters, and tales haunting their every doorway and steep gable-end,
came down to the water’s edge; where broad brown craft lay crowded
along the water side, and red-capped men lowered barrels from upper
stories, and wooden-shod women, with their skirts girt high, clattered
down the step, which alone stood between their back doors and the
waterway, to fill empty pails, or empty full ones. A life and a folk
strangely suggestive, at least to the foreigner, of those of Haarlem
city in the days of the Spanish occupation.
The boat did not go fast that June day; indeed, once afloat in her, it
was possible to realise at what a really superior speed Amsterdam had
been approached on the great canal. It was also now possible to think
of that canal as “great.” It was very great in comparison to this one.
But even at this rate of progress Haarlem was left behind before very
long, and on either side was green country. A very straight white road
ran by the canal on one side. It was by this on his bicycle den Heer
Karel would have gone to the bulb garden had he been alone. A remark on
the subject drew from him the assurance that it was much cooler to go
this way, and that the glaring white dust of the road often hurt his
eyes. The which, with its dwelling on the one point of the journey
agreeable to him, seems more really graceful than an assurance of
delight in it; this even if he had not added, “besides, then I should
not have had company, and now I have, which is pleasant.” There is a
certain sincere politeness among the Dutch, which is attractive in its
simplicity, and at its best recalls the Quakers.
I have been told that the village to which I went that day is
surprisingly wicked. The same has been told of every village, except
one, with which I have come in contact in England. Possibly, usually,
with some truth, though the surprise may have lain more in the nature
of the surprisee—it is hard not to think of picturesque cottages and
green fields as Gardens of Eden—than in the outrageous iniquity of the
villagers. Certainly den Heer Karel was no connoisseur of wickedness in
any of its branches; he would be likely to find surprising most
varieties that came to his notice among the village people whom he
individually knew. His uncle, who was the pastor of the village, was of
something the same sort, though, so the nephew said, he did not know
half the bad things which were done there. The which was easy to
believe when one met the pastor, a white-haired old man, whose hopeful
eyes saw always the best in human nature, and whose unconscious
saintship inevitably drew out the best, so that the most unrighteous,
from shame or from sympathy, made efforts to be righteous in his
company.
In the gardens, which were reached at the end of this leisurely voyage,
ranunculi were in bloom—a flower not often to be met in quantity in
England, where it is not popular. Why, is not clear, certainly one
might have thought it old-fashioned enough to have returned to favour
with straight-backed chairs and china dogs and cottage ornaments. The
more admired anemones were nearly over that day, only a few crimson and
purple flowers remained, so wide open that their black centres were all
revealed. They still stood stiff and straight on their stalks, not
bending to every breeze, like the ranunculi, which were a mass of
dancing rosettes, scarlet for the most part, though at the far corner
of the field there was a narrow strip of ivory-white ones, a beautiful
colour contrast.
We were still looking at the flowers when the pastor found us, and
carried us home to the Pastorie to tea. Tea in handleless cups, brought
from China, long before the ports were open to any but the sturdy old
Dutch traders, and handed down from mother to daughter without written
bequest, but inalienable as an English coronet. The maid-servant, I
remember, brought in her cup, not a little handleless one, but a good
substantial young basin, and her mistress filled it from the pot when
we had all been served. She was a rosy-cheeked bare-armed maid, close
relation, one might think, to Miss Matty’s invaluable Martha, or, in
appearance, to Peggotty of greater fame. Like Martha in her taste for
the lads, so her mistress said—a perhaps excusable fault, seeing that
many of the water-going profession—a class notoriously adept at
love-making—were always coming and going to the otherwise quiet little
village. Like Martha, too, she was in her unabashed interest in
strangers. It was the most wide-eyed attention she bestowed on me, and
with the most obvious reluctance that she left the room, with me in it,
when she had got her tea.
[Illustration: AZALEAS, HET LOO]
It was rather a dark little room, though it had two windows; one,
decorously veiled by hand-netted curtains, looking on to the cheeriness
of the village street; and one on to the small garden, where samples of
all the choice bulbs from the great grower in Haarlem were set, and
usually failed to bloom, for the pastor, unlike his brother, was a poor
gardener. On the other side of the passage was another room, the
pastor’s study it may have been called. There were no deep-seated
leather chairs there—the chairs were mostly wood, and not inviting to
repose; nor any richly sombre rows of leather-bound books, there were
only three books, a Bible and two others, and they were shabbily bound.
Rather a bare room, the white scrubbed floor quite carpetless, except
for a very small island of mat, which modestly hid itself under the
table. The folk who came to see the pastor on questions of mutual
dispute or individual difficulty, or any other of the hundred troubles
of common humanity, would seem to have been many. They were the sort
that wear wooden shoes, hard on carpets and great carriers of dirt, the
wife said, and she, no doubt, thought they would be happier if they had
not to keep such things in mind—as her husband certainly was. He was
most at home, good man, dispensing the wisdom of comfort in his
carpetless room, with his Bible and tobacco lying together on the deal
table, and the smoke of his pipe and his guests’ curling to the sunny
yellow-washed walls. The big window of this room looked out on to the
quay, and from it the pastor could nod greeting to half his
parishioners of a morning, and see, if he knew how to look, a good deal
of their doings. Even while we stood there that day, one of us very
conscious of the quiet brightness, the simple saintliness of the place,
the captain of our lately left boat came up on the deck of his little
vessel. He came to greet a girl—the fourth he had kissed, with the
well-received amorousness of at least betrothed rights, in my short
acquaintance with him. But the pastor did not know that, it was not the
sort of thing he knew. He knew how the captain had carried Johan
Vorst’s bulbs to Haarlem free that year, when the poor fellow lost so
much in the floods; how he brought the widow’s firing every winter, and
how he gave a job to Crooked Jan when he came back from prison, and no
one else (but the pastor) would give him a helping hand. These were the
things the pastor always knew—Blessings on the folk who always know the
best of us, and expect it, too!
But this is not concerning Dutch bulb fields, it has floated rather far
from the subject, like the little canal boat. Yet in a way it concerns
them, for to appreciate the flowers, and not only to see them as so
many streaks of colour or so many acres of blossoming roots, it is
perhaps well to know something of the life and ways of the people who
grow them—a people who have been the greatest gardeners, and some of
the greatest sea-carriers and collectors of the world for 400 years;
who, with much that is new, have kept a good deal that is old, and who
are perhaps less like what we are than what we used to be.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS
Winter in the bulb country is not a very attractive time, at least to
the foreigner. The same possibly may be said of winter in England,
though few healthy Englishmen, unless tied very tightly to town, admit
it. Winter in Holland is long, and, more often than not, very cold. The
canals are often frozen for a considerable time, when the easiest way
to get about in the country districts is on skates. Nearly all Dutchmen
are at home on skates; comparatively few are clever oarsmen, though one
might have thought they had equal opportunities. The reason probably
is, that one can go upon one’s work or business on skates, and save
rather than lose time thereby; whereas, in the average man’s
circumstances, one can only row for recreation. In England, of course,
such a reason would not operate; and, given the Dutch facilities, one
can imagine that as many good sportsmen would assemble to watch
inter-county contests on the frozen or liquid water (according to
season) as now enthusiastically look on at cricket or football matches.
Certainly there are very marked differences between the nations.
[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE STORKS]
They show among the women not less than the men. The pride, at least of
the more old-fashioned Dutch housewife, is her stove, the closed
stoves, which heat the room very well and very cleanly, give little
assistance to ventilation, and offer none of the cheer and sympathy of
the open fire. I have only met or heard of one English housewife who
was proud of a shining stove, and she lived in the Potteries, and was
the wife of a cheerful drunkard. In summer the majority of the stoves
in Dutch houses are taken down and put away—one would like to know
where. They must require room to store, and present an interesting
sight, wrapped in winding-sheets of greased paper, keeping their summer
Sabbath, like the dead kings waiting the summons of Charlemagne’s
sword. But the finest and most handsome of stoves are not taken down,
they remain in place through the summer, covered when the weather is
damp and when the room they adorn is not to be occupied; on no account
to be used for fire—standing as a testimony to the owner’s housewifery
and an impressive object to the visitor. One visitor, at least, was
impressed by such a shining steel tower, impressed with the amount of
elbow-grease required to keep it in order, if nothing else; though that
same visitor had the bad taste to admire far more an old stove,
exhibited with similar pride, by the host of a little inn on a remote
Swiss road—a wonderful stone stove, with the date 1700 cut into it, and
a history as interesting as would be the experiment (for the
uninitiated) of lighting a fire there. A stove, that, to burn
compromising papers, to destroy blood-stained garments and traces of
crime, while the storm thundered without, as it did that day. The Dutch
stoves, no doubt infinitely better fitted for combustion and real
destruction of such things, or any other, make no such suggestions.
They suggest, besides the pride of housewives and the pains of
maid-servants, merely the useful heating apparatus of a comfortable
home, where, when the short days draw in and the lamp is lighted, the
family sit about the table and read and work—do crochet work and study
the foreign classics. Or perhaps examine pollen and plant parasites
with a microscope; or play very sweetly on the piano, which not
infrequently is adorned with a blue or crimson worked cover.
There is not much to be done in the bulb gardens in the winter, at all
events during the frosts. The land is put to bed, most of the bulb
fields are covered with straw or reeds, only those containing the
hardiest sorts, such as _Scilla sibirica_, _Winter aconite_, and a few
others, are left bare. This covering, which is of varying thickness to
suit the bulbs below, is not moved till the frost breaks and the milder
weather sets in. But when this happens there is a good deal to do, for
it has to be shifted in accordance with the rise and fall of the
thermometer: partially removed if the weather keeps mild, else the
bulbs would develop too fast in the warmth underneath; replaced for
cold nights, or if sharp frost is likely. In early spring great
attention has to be given to this, for with sunny mid-days, sharp night
frosts, periods of prolonged soaking rain and sudden nipping winds,
there is much trouble in suitably protecting and not over-covering the
bulbs.
In England the flowering of the crocus is looked upon with a certain
amount of joy. It is not, like the first snowdrop, the solitary
blooming of some brave single flower, which gives hope that the winter
may be going, but the sudden bursting into bloom of hundreds, which
declare that the sun has power again. A ribbon of yellow on the grass,
battalions of compact mauve figures on the slope, whole armies, violet
and white and gold, delicately fragrant, alive with humming bees,
definitely proclaiming the doom of winter. If this is so in England, in
Holland the flowering of the crocus means more still; every flower
represents a separate young crocus, a sound saleable corm, if the
grower knows his business and the ground is good. The bulbs, blooming
in hundreds, stand for a harvest underground, the census of which might
be taken from above, had one time and patience to count the flowers,
for at the base of each flower-shoot that the parent bulb throws up a
little young bulb will be found when the roots are lifted at the end of
June. So a field of flowering crocuses is more than a thing of delicate
beauty, and more than a sign that winter is over and past, and the time
of the return of the storks is at hand, it stands for so many
fawn-coloured bulbs—a marketable commodity, and each in itself a
mystery of re-creation and increase.
[Illustration: THE PROMISE OF SPRING]
Crocuses are not much grown in the immediate vicinity of Haarlem, the
land there is too valuable to be devoted to the inexpensive bulb. Many
thousands come from Hille, some small growers there make a speciality
of them, and grow little else; it is they who supply the big men who
supply the markets. There would seem to be about eighty-three sorts of
crocus now, which is something of an increase on the six sorts which
“Robinio of Paris, that painful and curious searcher after simples,”
sent to Gerard. By Parkinson’s time there appear to have been
thirty-one sorts known; but they had begun to cultivate bulbs in
earnest in his day, and to them it would have been more a matter of
interest than surprise to see our varieties, all of which, on the
authority of the grower, it is said, “have been derived from (grown
from seed of) the original _Crocus vernus_ of South and Central
Europe.” When this crocus was first introduced into Holland it is not
easy to say. Nor is it easy to discover “when” (in the words of the
same grower) “cultivators and amateurs began to hybridise the different
forms”—nor yet when there first were different forms of it to
hybridise; certainly it happened very long ago. There is a tradition
that the saffron crocus (_Crocus sativus_) was introduced into England
in 1339. Hakluyt speaks of its being brought by a pilgrim who,
appreciating the sovereign value of the plant, and “proposing to do
good to his country,” carried home a root hidden in his staff, which
had been made hollow “of purpose,” though whether for the purpose of
carrying saffron or anything else of value or interest he could pick
up, is not clear. In either case the proceeding is rather typically
English, as also are Hakluyt’s further remarks on saffron growing. He
regrets that it has become a failing industry in these days, when many
sturdy fellows are without work, and suggests, even as we suggest the
revival of sundry curious things, that it should be revived for the
benefit of the unemployed, who then, as now, were a cut-and-come-again
problem.
It is interesting to notice that the older writers include all crocuses
and colchicums under the name saffron, not meaning, as we do now, only
the _Crocus sativus_. This crocus, and other varieties of
autumn-flowering ones, are grown in Holland; the delicate flowers,
beautifying some few fields when the rest are, for the most part, bare,
give to them almost a look of spurious spring. It was no doubt this
spring-like look of the autumn flowers which inspired the legend that
they first appeared in fields where Medea spilt some drops of the magic
liquor she had prepared to restore Æson to the vigour of youth. No
doubt also it was this, and the fact that, reversing the usual order,
the seed heads come in the spring, that gave them their old name,
“Sonne-before-the-father.”
The original crocus of all crocuses is now believed to have been a
native of Kashmere, and to have followed the Aryan migration through
the temperate globe; brought, no doubt, in the first instance for its
saffron, whereof it would seem these remote ancestors of the European
race thought as highly as did Hakluyt’s pilgrim. In its various wild
forms it is found now in Persia and the Levant, in the Alps and the
Apennines, in Italy and Greece, and on the lower slopes of the
Pyrenees; and it has been so long in these countries that it has come
to be reckoned an indigenous flower, and has a place in many old
legends. Ovid tells us that Proserpine was picking “graceful crocus and
white lilies” when she was carried off. It is he also who tells of the
origin of the flower in Greece. A youth named Crocus in love with a
nymph Smilax: he, for the impatience of his love, turned into the
flower; and she—for no apparent reason, which seems unfair—turned into,
not the delicate green plant we call by her name, but a yew tree, a
somewhat sombre fate for the inamorata of so ephemeral a trifler as
Crocus appears.
In spite of this tale of impatient love there does not seem to be any
record, as one might have expected, of the use of crocus in the
flavouring of love philtres or charms. The veil of Hymen was
saffron-coloured; the flower, among others, sprang up on the ground
where Zeus and Hera reclined, from sheer astonishment, one might
imagine, at seeing the Olympian pair on good terms. We ourselves have
dedicated it to St. Valentine—
“While the crocus hastens to the shrine
Of Primrose love on St. Valentine”—
though the time of its flowering probably has to do with that. But
among the many strange and unpleasant things which have been used in
the flavouring of love philtres saffron does not appear to have had a
place.
It has been used for many other things. “The crocus rayed with gold” is
among the flowers which crown Sophocles’ “mighty goddess.” The Greeks
also, we know, reckoned it among perfumes. Aristophanes, in _The
Clouds_, has a somewhat unquotable line on the subject. Among the
Easterns it was held a choice spice: “Spikenard and saffron, calamus
and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes,” were
the spices that were to flow out from the garden of the Beloved in The
Song of Solomon. One old authority held it to be the food of the
fairies, and the humans in his day held it in high esteem. But now it
is fallen from its high estate, and, though the County Council or some
other body might still prosecute a man for selling adulterated saffron,
it would be disinterested philanthropy, and bear no resemblance to the
burning of offenders at Nuremberg in the fifteenth century for a
similar offence. In Persia it is still much used as a condiment; in a
less degree in Spain; in Holland one finds it flavouring rice boiled
with milk; here in England it lingers still in the saffron cakes of
Cornwall, otherwise it plays small part, except as a food-colouring
matter. For that it seems to have been in use in Shakespeare’s time.
The clown, who has so many things to buy for Perdita’s shearing feast,
ticks it off among the rest: “I must have saffron,” he says, “to colour
the warden pies.” And we, though we have lost the receipt for warden
pies, still use saffron to colour our cookery. Especially is this the
case in Russia, where the law holds that all food-colouring must be
vegetable,—a singular law, when one comes to think that all the
alkaloid poisons are of vegetable origin, and for real nastiness it is
hard to beat some of the dyes of Nature’s providing.
But it was as a drug that the saffron crocus was most greatly prized
among the peoples of middle and western Europe. In the late middle ages
it appears to have been much used as an eye-wash,—one feels it was
fortunate folk did not have to try their eyes then as now. By Gerard’s
time it was in great favour for many things; he speaks of it as making
“the senses more quicke and lively, shaking off heavie and drowsie
sleep, and making a man merrie.” “It is a herb of the Sun and under the
Lion,” writes N. Culpeper, student of physic and astrology in 1652.
“Let not above 10 grains be given at one time, for if the Sun, which is
the fountain of life, may dazzle the eyes and make them blinde, a
Cordial being taken in an inordinate quantity may hurt the heart
instead of helping it.” This view possibly led to crocus standing in an
early Victorian _Language of Flowers_ for “excess,” or—in the generous
way that one small flower might then be interpreted to mean a whole
phrase—“beware of excess of love.” But it is more than as a cordial for
the heart that N. Culpeper regards saffron: “It quickens the brain,” he
says, “for the Sun is exalted in Aries, as well as he hath his house in
the Dragon head, it helps the Consumption of the Lungs and difficulty
of breathing, it is an excellent thing in epidemical diseases, as
Pestillence, Small Pox, and Measles; it is an excellent expulsive
medicine and a notable remedy for the Yellow Jaundice.” More than this
can hardly be asked of one plant. After it the humble snowdrop is a
mere nobody.
The snowdrop may, with justice, be called humble, certainly it has a
much better right to the title than the violet. Gerard, by the way,
speaks of it as a “bulbous violet,” though there seems little
resemblance between them, except the ascribed qualities of humility and
retirement, which are entirely undeserved in one case. Violets like
sunshine, a good position, and fat living, and, though the leaves hide
the flowers in some varieties, it is of those that the scent is
strongest and most betraying. It is not the fault of the plant if it is
suffered to “blush unseen.” But snowdrops really do like retirement and
poor ground. In Holland they decline entirely to grow in the open in
fields or gardens, and they cannot thrive, really cannot live, in
manure and all fat soil. All the snowdrop bulbs which are raised in
Holland are grown under hedges or in orchards, where the roots of the
trees impoverish the ground and take from it what the little bulbs
dislike. Mostly they are grown by the smaller growers, who sell them to
the big ones in their immediate neighbourhood. It is possibly this
preference for overgrown places and neglected soil which has made
snowdrops flourish and increase so in the orchards and overgrown
gardens of old monasteries. It has been suggested that it is because
they were planted there in such abundance in the old days when they
were sacred to the Virgin, and were used to strew her altars on the
Feast of the Purification,—when they, the Fair Maids of February, as
they were called, were the only maids who had any right within those
walls. But since they flourish equally well in old shrubberies and
orchards unconnected with monasteries and monastic history, it looks
rather as if soil and situation has a good deal to do with it too.
[Illustration: A CROCUS FIELD]
They have long been grown in Holland. The old Dutch name was Somer
Sottekens, though what it means I have not been able to discover.
Somer, no doubt, is another form of “Zomer” (summer), though snowdrops
no more then than now bloomed nor yet were planted in summer; Sottekens
remains, to me at least, a mystery. The first snowdrops came from
Germany and Hungary, and the later blooming sort from Constantinople.
In Parkinson’s day there was no talk of them being native to England.
They had not been in the country long enough to have increased and
naturalised themselves, as they have in some districts now.
Undisturbed, in both England and Holland they increase rapidly, by
offsets, according to the usual bulb habit; if they like the situation,
often forming clumps twenty or thirty strong, and continuing to grow in
land that has long gone out of cultivation.
In England the flower is not so much admired as it used to be, when it—
Chaste snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years—
received the tribute of much minor verse. Now we principally remember
in connection with it that it does not lend itself well to pot culture,
and makes no show as a cut flower; hence, seeing its inconspicuousness
and the usual state of the weather at the time of blooming, it is of
little use as an ornament. And the fact that it either takes so kindly
to its surroundings that it becomes almost a weed, or else dislikes
them and practically declines to grow at all, is rather against it. But
in the days of our grandmothers it was different, then it was
essentially the young girl’s flower, and so was graced with all the
characteristics which were reckoned to adorn “refined and elegant young
females.” Of it, “the Winter’s timid child,” a poetess of those days
wrote:—
All weak and wan, with head inclined,
Its parent breast the drifted snow,
It trembles, while the ruthless wind
Bends its slim form; the tempest lowers,
Its emerald eye drops crystal showers
On its cold bed below.
Where’er I find thee, gentle flower,
Thou still art sweet and dear to me!
For I have known the cheerless hour,
Have seen the sunbeams cold and pale,
Have felt the chilling wintry gale,
And wept and shrunk, like thee.
Conceive the delight of the first “elegant young female” who saw these
words inscribed on the pink-tinted pages of her album, probably beneath
some two or three dried flowers of the mishandled plant. Well, well, we
have changed all that now; the elegant females have gone, though the
minor poet is still with us, and no less minor, though possibly less
“refined.”
Earlier than crocus, as early as snowdrops, comes the winter
aconite—_Eranthis hyemalis_. It is grown in quantity in Holland, but as
the corms are so very small, not more than half an inch in diameter,
one does not see large stretches. It is said that as many as a thousand
good corms can be raised on two square metres of land, so naturally it
is sold cheap. We prize it as one of the earliest flowers of the year,
and because it is hardy, and will, if left to itself, grow anywhere,
even under deciduous shrubs. But to our forbears it had another and
greater importance, for it was reckoned the “counter-poison monkhood,”
and its roots were considered “effectual, not only against the poison
of the poisonful helmet flower and all others of that kind, but also
against the poison of all venomous beasts,”—a large and useful
characteristic to be possessed by any plant.
One of the most beautiful of the early spring flowers is one
practically without history—the _Scilla sibirica_. It is comparatively
a newcomer in Dutch bulb fields, for it was brought to Europe from Asia
Minor, the Happy Land of bulb collectors, somewhere about 1800. As yet
there are only three varieties differing from the original and first
discovered kind. These are pale blue, white, and pinkish pale blue, all
reared from seed, and none, in the opinion of the uninitiated, to
compare with the original blue,—a colour bluer than anything else that
grows, except perhaps gentians, and though not so deep and intense,
almost more brilliant and striking than they. Coming into flower almost
before crocus, growing low and close to the ground, and of this rare
and exquisite colour, a field of them in flower against the pearly
paleness of the cold landscape is a sight not to be forgotten. In
England, though they are admired, they are hardly yet grown so much as
one would expect, seeing that they will endure hard treatment and a
poor soil, and, if untouched, year after year send their blue flowers
through the grass. Immense numbers are grown in Holland, though not
round Haarlem, more in the direction of Hillegom, where the land is
cheap. The little bulbs increase rapidly, from offsets which grow
around the parent. They can also be easily raised from seed, and,
contrary to the habit of most bulbs, come to the flowering stage fairly
quickly, seed-grown Scillas being of a saleable size in from three to
four years after sowing.
It was certainly not this early blooming member of the Scilla family
that Reginald Scott had in his mind when, in his _Discovery of
Witchcraft_ (1587), he wrote of the countries “where they hang Scilla
(which is either a root or in this place garlic) in the roof of the
house to keep away witches and spirits.” One wonders a little what he
meant, for garlic is not a Scilla, and it hardly seems likely he was
referring to what Parkinson calls _Scilla alba_, or the Great Sea Onion
of the Mediterranean. Onions proper, and many varieties of the Alliums,
have, of course, played some considerable part in the history of
witchcraft. The only two cases of witchcraft which came under the
personal notice of the present writer were connected with the homely
English onion. In the one case, it was an old man who accused his
neighbour of “overlooking the onion bed,” with dire results; and in the
other, it was an accredited wizard who “named an onion for” his enemy,
stuck it full of pins, and hung it to shrivel in the chimney, in order
that the enemy might shrivel as the onion did, and within the year die
in agony. As it happened, however, it was the wizard who died. On his
death-bed he sent for the other, confessed what he had done, and
ordered that the shrivelled onion should be given him, possibly with
the idea of undoing the spell, which had rebounded on himself. The
enemy is alive to this day, and is as great a man as the other was
little, and better known for good works than the other was for
bad—wherefrom, obviously, there is a moral.
The Allium family has a long history and many uses, but as
ornamental plants they are hardly to be recommended. Some of them
are grown in Holland for that purpose, and we read of them in the
catalogues—handsome pale blue, yellow, and white flowers, and a few
rarer ones pink, very showy, and for the most part somewhat
unsavoury if broken or even slightly bruised. They are the smart
members of a homely family, and, as is usually the case with such,
though no doubt very admirable in some ways, not appealing
specially to the majority of people. But Alliums blooming, as they
do, in May, are hardly early spring flowers, and having by some
devious way reached them, the subject had better be quitted.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
HYACINTH OR IRIS?
Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo, accidentally met death at the hands of
that god, through the interposition of jealous Zephyr. Apollo, after
grieving for his favourite, cried to his blood: “Thou shalt be a new
flower inscribed with my lamentations!” and immediately after, “Behold
the blood shed on the grass ceases to be blood, and a flower springs
forth more beautiful than Tyrian dye, and takes the same form as the
lily, save that the lily is silvery white and this is purple. Phoebus
himself writes his own lamentations upon the petals, and Ai! Ai! is
written upon the flower.”
But it was very long ago when Ovid told this tale of the childhood of
the world, and in the course of the centuries some names get lost and
some misapplied; the question is, what flower is it that sprang from
the dead boy’s blood? A flower that is purple—and the Greek purple,
which included many shades of red—was a colour in no way related to the
French greys and violet blue that are all our hyacinths can show, but
which is the colour of the common purple iris. A flower that was like a
lily, which our hyacinth is not, excepting only the lily of the
valley—a solitary and most untypical lily in its way of blooming; but
which an iris may be taken to be, seeing its long confusion and
identification with the lilies of France. And a flower that
memorialised the sun-god’s grief, and was inscribed with signs of it:
an inscription on the hyacinth is hard to seek, for though it is true
some learned person has given the common wood hyacinth the surname
_Non-scriptus_, what one, especially if one were a grower, would really
like to see, is a hyacinth that is _scriptus_. The iris, on the other
hand, has well-defined marks upon it, such as fancy can easily make
sign-writing of sorts; which, indeed, fancy has so made in other
tales—the tale of their springing from Ajax’s blood and bearing his
name upon them, and the tale of their growing from the grave of the
illiterate saint, and being marked with Ave Maria, the sole words of
prayer he knew. From all of which it seems one must conclude that the
flower called forth by Phoebus Apollo when Hyacinthus died was not what
we call hyacinth now.
[Illustration: HYACINTHS SCATTERED ON THE SAND]
Not that hyacinths are not of respectable antiquity, quite as
respectable as iris. Very long ago they must have made the wreaths at
festivals and of bridesmaids in Greece, as they sometimes do to this
day; very long ago the Persian poet sang his fancy—
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head.
Though in the latter case, when one thinks of the great hyacinths of
the bulb growers, one feels them to be a rather unwieldy decoration for
the “lovely head,” and likely rather easily to be dislodged and fall to
the “garden’s lap.” But the original _Hyacinthus orientalis_, parent of
all our hyacinths, whether it came to us from Persia or from the other
side of the Himalayas, as Parkinson’s sub-name _zumbul indi_ rather
suggests, was a very different thing from the hyacinth of to-day. It
was a very small, poor thing, not so good as a poor specimen of the
white Roman hyacinth that blooms for us at Christmas. Even in
Parkinson’s time, when they had been cultivated in Europe for more than
fifty years, they were very far from the present hyacinth, indeed
nearer to the parent’s standard. “They have,” he says, “flowers of a
fair bluish purple colour, and all standing many times on one side the
stalk and many times on both.” A hyacinth now that is not flowered
equally all round is an unheard-of failure. And in number of florets,
too, things are considerably altered; a writer at the end of the
eighteenth century speaks of a fine hyacinth truss having from twenty
to thirty bells; now the average is from fifty to sixty, and one
specimen of the variety _Jacques_, bloomed in Haarlem, had one hundred
and ten. All this, of course, is the consequence of careful selection
and cultivation, selection and cultivation, and selection again, an art
in which the Dutch growers excel, and which is more successfully
manifested in the development of the hyacinth than in anything else.
Of all bulbs, hyacinths perhaps are the most typically Dutch; tulips
may have the greater name, but other western nations have an interest
in them and a tradition of them. We find them in our old memoirs and
tales; we see them on the embroidered waistcoats of the beaux of Queen
Anne’s court, and among the enamelled toys of the late days of the
French monarchy; they are figured in the prim paintings of our
great-grandmothers and on the cups of Dresden and Lowestoft china; they
even occur on the porcelain fragments that are discovered on the
far-off African coast, though probably there they are of Dutch or
Chino-Dutch origin. But a hyacinth, a big, full hyacinth, is
essentially and entirely Dutch; its very type and standard of beauty is
almost national, and nowhere else in the world can the bulb be produced
in perfection. In Ghent and near Berlin, in the sandy Spree plain, it
has been tried, but never with real success; the production of the
true, fine, and perfect hyacinth bulb belongs to the Dutch growers
alone.
The bulb, even now after all these years of cultivation, is no trifle
to produce, no untended child of a summer’s growth. It takes four
years, and care and understanding, to raise a marketable hyacinth bulb;
four years, or in some very propitious soils and circumstances,
possibly three. There are two methods open to the grower who is
producing hyacinths: either he slightly hollows the base of the bulb
from which he wants increase, or else he cross-cuts it in several
directions with cuts nearly half an inch deep. If he follows the latter
course, he must bury the bulb after cutting for a week, so that the
cuts may open and remain open. After that he will treat it as a
hollowed bulb is treated, that is, leave it alone in the dry warmth of
the barn, and in time there will appear between the layers innumerable
young bulblets, of sizes varying from a grain of rice to a pea. One may
sometimes see on the shelves of bulb barns the swollen and distorted
parent bulbs, the young bulbs distending all their coats, waiting in
the warmth for the time of planting. The parent, whether cut or
hollowed, is planted whole in this state, when a proportion of the
young bulbs take individual root and establish a separate existence.
When in July the bulbs are taken out of the ground the young ones are
found to be nice little bulbs of quite moderate proportions. Not yet,
of course, of saleable size nor of the blooming age; they want more
years of planting and lifting at the proper seasons before they are the
substantial bulbs of commerce. They flower before that time, sometimes
in the first but more often in the second year, but they have not come
to perfection, and it is not till they are four years old that there
may be expected the perfect, big, trussed flower.
Seeing the labour in production one wonders, not that hyacinths are “so
dear,” but rather that they are so cheap; also one feels that they are
hardly treated with the respect they deserve in England. “They,” so it
is often complained here, “do so little good the second year, and the
offset bulbs, when there are any, are so very poor.” But why not? Why
should not the offsets be poor? If under the hands of those who give
time, and experience, and understanding, they are only good after so
much labour, why should they be good without any trouble or labour at
all? And for doing well a second year, a hyacinth is as other plants,
it has its time of maturity, its gradual approach to it, and its
decline: it takes four years to reach its finest under this treatment;
afterwards it usually declines from it. The rate and style of the
decline will vary, but it is not likely to be delayed by the treatment
of the English amateur or in the English flower-bed. “It is,” so an old
grower once said, “as you may call the flower of one year, but what a
flower! It requires four years to make it, then there is the Flower;
after that—it is nothing, usually I would not say thank you for it. Ah,
but when it is there, it is indeed a Flower! One can respect that!”
In England hyacinths are not respected; the average English gardener
now wants something by the hundred for the border, he does not want
individuality. The old ladies who used to grow hyacinths in tall blue
and green glasses treated them with more respect. Hyacinth glasses are
not beautiful, yet one feels tenderly towards them for old sake’s
sake,—the memories of drowsy hours spent stumbling over _Easy Reading
for the Young_, in a room where the glasses stood on the window-sill
when spring had dethroned the red sausage-shaped draught excluder, and
the canary that hung between chirped as he peeped first at the white
flower in the blue glass and then at the pink flower in the green, and
possibly (at least in the stumbling reader’s mind) speculated as to
whether the ghostly roots to be seen through the glass were a rare and
horrible specimen of worm. Those hyacinths were appreciated, the first
opening of the flowers noted, the number of bells counted, the scent
enjoyed with neighbours not similarly blessed with bulbs. Now we do not
grow hyacinths in glasses. We, some people, grow them in pans, where
they look very like a small flower-bed moved into the house. Six or
eight “miniature hyacinths” (these are the immature offset bulbs of one
or two years’ growth) crammed in together, where, one would think, they
must be very uncomfortable, though it does not prevent them from each
producing a truss of flowers, smaller and looser certainly than that of
a mature hyacinth, but giving satisfaction to the uninitiated. Some
people grow hyacinths singly in pots, and stand them in rows on
conservatory shelves or about their rooms, where they look well if the
rooms are solidly Victorian, or furnished with beautiful specimens of
cabinet-work in satinwood and tulipwood. Your hyacinth is no modern, no
ornament for the furniture and rooms of _nouveaux arts_ or culture, and
it sorts very ill with half-toned æsthetics or the expensive
pseudo-simple. Possibly that may account for its being rather out of
fashion in England just now, where few people have a taste for the
solidly Victorian, and fewer still the money for the old satinwood of
the eighteenth century, or the exquisite tulipwood of France. Long ago
it was different; seventeenth-century England admired hyacinths
greatly, obtaining, then as now, all the really good ones from Holland,
where already they were extensively cultivated. The price fetched by
choice bulbs then was high, though never quite equal to that of tulips
at the zenith of their fame. Report speaks of £200 being paid for a
single hyacinth bulb in the middle of the seventeenth century; but by
the end of the eighteenth £25 was thought extravagant, even for a
choice florist’s variety. According to a writer in 1796, the price of
ordinary bulbs then varied from 3d. apiece to, in rare cases, as much
as £10. A fairly wide range, and one that is not so very dissimilar
from that of the present time, though it is probable we now have a
greater selection at 3d. and a smaller at £10.
Hyacinths in the bulb gardens of Holland are planted in September in
very heavily manured ground. In the winter they have to be protected by
a thick covering of straw, more, indeed, than is given to any bulbs
except some of the lily family, usually from four to five inches in
thickness. This is taken off in spring, when the crowns appear; it is
essential that they should not be kept covered too long or too closely
in mild weather, or the prematurely developed shoots will be too tender
to stand the night frosts of early spring. Hyacinths are subject to
some few diseases; one of them necessitates the removal of a suspected
bulb from among its neighbours. Sometimes one may see a procession of
men going forth to the hyacinth fields, each armed with a long narrow
tool, in shape a little like the instrument used for cutting asparagus
in Belgium; and also, if the weather is sunny, each carrying an
umbrella, an article much more used in Holland than in England. The
procession, to which the umbrellas give something of dignity if not
solemnity, moves slowly along a field, each man taking a row and
examining the hyacinths one by one for signs of the disease. With his
umbrella he shields the sun from his head and neck, the weather usually
seems to be hot on these occasions; with his tool he neatly and cleanly
lifts the suspected bulb from among its fellows.
[Illustration:
“IN EMERALD TUFTS, FLOWERS PURPLE, BLUE, AND
WHITE, LIKE SAPPHIRE, PEARL, AND RICH EMBROIDERY.”
]
Hyacinth flowers are cut off before their beauty is quite spent, so
that they shall not come to seed. Generally speaking, no bulb of any
sort is allowed to come to seed, unless of course that particular seed
is wanted for the raising of new varieties; to produce seed greatly
exhausts the bulb. Hyacinth flowers are cut close down to the leaves;
sometimes the cut blooms are scattered over the ground, where other
sorts of bulbs, as yet not showing shoots, are growing, this to prevent
the light sandy soil from being blown away, leaving the bulbs beneath
bare. Some few of the flowers are sold; some, I have heard it said, are
used for manure; but the great bulk of them seem just a waste product.
As yet nothing has been done with regard to extracting the scent from
them, though one would almost have thought it had been worth while. Of
course there would be difficulties in the way, the flowers have too
much moisture to allow of their being steam-distilled, like roses and
some other scent-providing flowers, and to pomade them, as violets are
pomaded, would be rather a costly process.
The hyacinth _Hyacinthus orientalis_, though certainly the great man of
the family, as parent of all that are commonly called hyacinths, is,
after all, only one of a group. Parkinson gives forty-eight “iacinths,”
as he spells them. Some of them, it is true, would seem to be only
varieties of the same kind, and some are things placed in other classes
by modern florists. Still, even without these, a good many remain, and
some at least are grown in the bulb gardens of Holland to-day. Grape
hyacinths (_Muscari_, because they were supposed to smell of musk) are
of these. They are a good deal grown in Holland, and are coming into
much favour in England, no one knows why. _Hyacinthus candicans_ is
also grown in Holland. This, of course, is a newcomer from the Cape,
unknown to Parkinson; its tall stalks and far-scattered white bells
give it little resemblance in appearance to the rest of its relations.
The wood hyacinth, _Nutans_, is also raised, but is usually to be found
under the heading “Squills” in a grower’s list. Parkinson classes it
with his iacinths, where one would have thought it belonged, calling it
_Hyacinthus anglicus belgiciis_. He also classes with them what he
calls _Scilla alba_—the common squill of the Mediterranean—the great
and important squill of old medicine, which, according to the
herbalists, must have been good for everything, epidemic, accidental,
and chronic, from worms to toothache, though most especially for
consumptive diseases. “The Apothecaries prepare thereof both Wine,
Vinegar and Oxymel or Syrupe, which is singular to exterminate and
expectorate tough flegm, which is a cause of much disquiet to the body,
and an hinderer of concoction, or digestion in the stomach, besides
divers other wayes, wherein the scales of the roots being dried, are
used. And Galen hath sufficiently explained the qualities and
properties thereof, in his eight book of Simples.” Pliny, doubtless,
explained something of the same, for he, too, wrote of squills. So did
that magnificent Dutchman, Clusius, who reports that when, in the true
spirit of inquiry, he was about to make personal test of the _Scilla
rubra_, he was stopped by the Spaniards, who assured him it was a most
strong and potent poison. It is to be regretted that the Dutchmen of
to-day do not grow the _Scilla rubra_, though perhaps it is not
unreasonable, for, according to all accounts, it was not much to look
at.
Among the flowers much more grown in Holland to-day than in former
times iris stands well first. The iris, of course, is an old flower,
even though it may have lost its first Greek name, and taken another
after that rather overworked personage, the cutter of life’s threads
and rain-bringer, Juno’s rainbow-winged messenger. Under various names
the iris, whether tuberous or bulbous, has figured a good deal in
history and legend. There has even been controversy about it, whether
Shakespeare meant an iris or a lily when he spoke of fleur-de-lys in
another than heraldic sense, and whether Chaucer did.
It is quite clear the old masters of medicine understood
“flower-de-luce” as iris, whether they spoke of “the bulbous blue kind”
or the tuberous “flaggy kind,” the white flag of Florence, from which
they, as we, derived orris root, and the common yellow flag from which
they derived other things which we do not. Their descriptions and
receipts for mingling the extract with honey to mitigate the sharpness
of its attack upon the stomach (!) have come down to us to convince us
that they knew the iris; also that they, such of them as survived, were
stouter men inside than their decadent descendants.
Of late years iris, dethroned from an honourable place in medicine, has
come much into fashion as a garden flower. Not without reason, many
sorts are easy for the amateur to cultivate, and all are very
effective. The variety among them is enormous; not only are there in
the hands of growers many comparatively new discoveries from North
Africa, Central Asia, Asia Minor, and South Europe, but the improving
and altering of all the families, new and old, has made the varieties
wonderful both in number and beauty now. Large quantities of iris are
grown in Holland, some of the rarer sorts and still more of the cheap
and well-known kinds. In June one may see fields of Spanish Iris (_Iris
xiphion_), exquisite, delicately-tinted flowers, quivering at the top
of their grey-green stalks. Blooming, as they do, when most of the
other bulb flowers are over, and when, in the early days of the
industry, most of the fields must have been rather bare, they have a
separate and special attraction. They are very nearly hardy bulbs, and
withstand the winter’s cold with little protection. They are little
trouble in the growing, and are lifted at the end of July, when the
greater number of other bulbs are already harvested. They increase
fairly well, and the young ones have the further advantage of coming to
maturity in a comparatively short time. New varieties, as is almost
invariably the case with bulbs, are obtained from seed. One may often
see small patches of new sorts, of which the grower has hope, flowering
beside large quantities of the established kind, this for the sake of
comparison, and to determine if the new is really new, and has anything
worthy of preservation. The original bulb of Spain is said to have been
blue flowered, the yellow influence coming from Portugal; but the
crossing and blending of the two, whether started by art or nature, was
begun too far back to be recorded. It is impossible to trace the
history of many of the innumerable and beautiful shades and blends that
exist now.
_Iris anglica_ is another striking feature of the bulb gardens in early
summer, coming into flower just when the Spanish are over, and
presenting a more gorgeous and striking effect. It is a native of the
Pyrenees, and no relation in root or anything else to the
tuberous-rooted flag-irises of England. The Dutch growers had it, in
the first instance, from English sailors or merchants, and either
mistook its place of origin or named it after the nation from whom they
received it. The flowers, with the extraordinary variety they show,
their somewhat stiff method of growth and great development, are
decidedly more typical of the nation of gardeners than of the nation
whose name they bear.
Among the irises, both bulbous and tuberous, now grown in Holland I
regret to say I have not been able to identify the iris of
Clusius—“Clusius his first great Flowerdeluce.” “This Flowerdeluce hath
divers long and broad leaves, not stiff like all the others, but soft
and greenish on the upper side, and whitish underneath.” The flower was
“of a fair blue, a pale sky colour in most,” and showed in the six
lower petals a tendency to turn up at the edges, the three smaller and
upper of these parting at the lip and standing up “like unto two small
ears.” The description of the flower reads a little like a Spanish
Iris, and the native place was clearly Spain; but the leaves sound
quite different to those of the Spanish as we know it, also the time of
blooming is placed too early. The flower is described as very sweet of
scent, and “the root is reasonable great.” Doubtless, towards the close
of the sixteenth century it was to have been seen blooming in the
famous garden at Leyden; perhaps some descendants are still to be found
in that city, yearly honouring the great man who named them, and helped
to make the city famous. But in none of the gardens round Haarlem have
I seen it, and in no grower’s catalogue does it figure, at all events
under its original name.
Irises, besides being among the latest of the bulb flowers, are almost
among the earliest. In early March one may see _Iris reticulata_,
_Bakeriana_, _histroides_, and a few other delicate-looking specimens
blooming in surroundings which look singularly unsuitable to them. But
these, as yet, are very little grown, are somewhat costly, and still in
appearance something reminiscent of their Asiatic homes. None of them
are recorded to be natives of Europe, although I myself have seen
irises surprisingly like _Iris reticulata_, which were found by their
present owner growing wild in Spain. They were, when I saw them,
blooming under a north wall in a garden not far from the Scottish
border, this in a March blizzard, and they had done so for some four
years in succession. In colour, shape, and scent they were exactly like
_reticulata_, but whether or no they were truly so I cannot say.
[Illustration: SPANISH IRISES]
Among the more striking of the flowers to be seen in Holland now, _Iris
susiana_ certainly deserves mention. It is not a bulb iris but a
spreading rhizome, in growth more like the _Iris germanica_, though in
appearance quite unlike. It was introduced into Holland somewhere about
1570, and has been grown there practically without development or
variation ever since, but the days of its market popularity are
comparatively recent. Twenty years ago it is doubtful if there were
fifty of the strange flowers (they look rather as if they were made of
Japanese newspaper) to be found outside the Dutch gardens. Certainly in
England they were then very little known. And yet Parkinson, writing in
1629, gives them an important place among the then known irises. There
can be no doubt whatever that the _Iris susiana_ of to-day is what he
calls the Great Turkey Flowerdeluce, “the roots whereof,” he tells us,
“have been sent out of Turkey divers times among other things, and it
would seem that they have had their original from about Sufis, a chief
city of Persia.” His description of the flower tallies exactly, and he
notes the peculiarity that the petals “being laid in water will colour
the water into a violet colour, but if a little Allome be put therein,
and then wrung or pressed, and the juice of these leaves dryed in the
shadow, they will give a colour almost as deep as Indigo, and may be
used for shadows in limning excellent well.” The flower of the _Iris
susiana_, if left in water or even allowed to rot in the ordinary way,
produces a very strongly-coloured juice of a bluish violet tint. There
really is no room to doubt that the two irises are the same, though how
it happened that the then and now valued flower went so out of English
cultivation, almost out of English knowledge, it is difficult to say.
One imagines that there came a time when no one appreciated its
“singularity and rarity”—the only charms it has to offer—and it was
allowed to die out. Without care, of course, it would not thrive or
increase. It seldom bears seeds in these colder countries, and the very
few that are occasionally borne never ripen. And it would hardly have
increased by spreading,—as a rhizome if left undisturbed for long it
would always die in the centre of every clump it formed, only living at
the edges, and in an unpropitious climate and circumstances it would
speedily dwindle away. Anyhow, it would seem to have happened, the
Great Turkey Flowerdeluce left us, to return _Iris susiana_ many years
later, when the tide of taste, which has changed many things and
relegated the formerly admired hyacinth to a secondary place, has put
all irises into fashion, and exalted this neglected flower to favour
and admiration. Such a fate has occurred before this to flowers and
books and men; to the books it matters little, they have time to ripen;
to the men—_post cineras gloria sera venit_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV
SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW
Exactly what influences favour in flowers, or indeed in most other
things, it is hard to say; no Dutch bulb-grower ever attempts to do so.
It may interest the leisurely student of mankind to discover the causes
and trends of fashion, but the grower asks little or nothing about it,
he merely accepts the evidence of his carefully-kept books, and the
character of the attention given to some certain flower or groups of
flowers at the shows, and sets himself to supply the demand that has
arisen, or is about to arise. He may regret, if he is an old man with
old-fashioned tastes, that popular liking has deserted _Ranunculus
asiaticus_. He may, if he is a young man, himself sharing the general
taste, prefer the dark-eyed _Anemone coronaria_ to the rosetted flowers
of earlier favour. But he will certainly give greater space to the
latter now. Both of these two are grown in Holland, and both in
something the same manner, though ranunculi want a heavier and moister
soil than anemones. There is one kind of ranunculus, the _Turban
ranunculus_, which is planted in December and covered rather thickly to
protect it from frost, but the _asiaticus_ is treated just as anemones
are. Both are set in early spring, both harvested in August; both are
strikingly beautiful when in flower, making very gorgeous stripes of
colour in the garden where they are. Both are old flowers in Holland,
they were certainly there by the middle of the sixteenth century; we in
England had anemones from thence somewhere about 1596, ranunculi
probably not much later. Both have been much cultivated and varied; but
the one, _Ranunculus asiaticus_, is curiously out of favour, especially
in England. Fifty or sixty years ago there were as many as eight or
nine hundred varieties catalogued, now there are not as many dozen. In
England we know that the early Victorians approved the ranunculus;
indeed, in the old _Language of Flowers_ the scentless rosette blossoms
are given an honourable place. An admirer giving a bunch (we do not
conceive of anyone giving them now, unless it is one grower to another
similarly interested)—an admirer giving them in 1840 could convey the
compliment, “You are radiant with charms.” In the opinion of those
times “the dazzling Ranunculus adorns our gardens with its brilliant
flowers, glowing with a thousand colours, resplendent with a thousand
charms. Scarcely any plant affords so rich a view.” Now we think quite
otherwise.
[Illustration: A BULB FARM NEAR OVERVEEN]
Anemones at that same time stood for the melancholy word “Forsaken”;
this probably on account of the Greek legend of their origin,—a legend
of the order not unfamiliar in Greek mythology, the loves of the gods,
the jealousies of the goddesses, the metamorphosis of the object, and
the desertion of the lover. In this case Zephyr, who abandoned the
nymph, thus transformed by Flora, to the rude caresses of Boreas, who,
unable to gain her love, shakes her afresh every spring. This legend
probably belonged, in the first instance, to the earlier blooming Star
Anemones and Hepaticas, those flowers at whose opening old gardeners
used to say, “the earth is in love, now is the time to sow.” These,
too, are grown in Holland, and have been since the day when Clusius
first brought there the yellow anemone he found at the “foot of St.
Bernard’s Hill near unto the Canton of the Switzers.” Since the days,
too, when the old herbalists used the leaves of some sorts in “the
ointment called _Marciatum_, which is composed of many other hot
herbes, and is used in cold griefs, to warme and comfort the parts.”
And even if they and the _Anemone coronaria_ do not now fetch the high
prices they did when they were among the collector’s fancies, they are
still a good deal in demand.
Among the flowers grown in the bulb gardens of to-day which favour has
treated somewhat strangely the Fritillaria family should certainly be
mentioned. The Crown Imperial, king and chief of the Fritillarias, is
grown now as it was in the early days of the bulb industry; the big
lily-like bulbs are treated in much the same way, and the old varieties
are there with comparatively few new ones added to them. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Crown Imperials ranked high among
flowers. Parkinson gives them the place of honour in his _Garden of
Pleasant Flowers_, and, in the pretty way of the old writers speaking
of a loved or admired object, lifts them from the neuter to the
gendered class: “The Crowne Imperial for his stately beautifulness,
deserveth the first place in this our garden of delights.” And judging
from some of the legends that have gathered about the flower, one
imagines it was cultivated and admired even earlier. But during the
nineteenth century it went out of favour, for some reason the “refined
and elegant” ceased to admire it and gardeners to cultivate it, other
flowers filling the place in popular favour.
No gorgeous flowers the meek Reseda grace,
Yet sip, with eager trunk, yon busy race
Her simple cup, nor heed the dazzling gem
That beam in Fritillaria’s diadem—
wrote a drawing-room poet of the early nineteenth century; and though
the beautifully banal—also botanically and every other way
incorrect—lines must not be regarded as exactly expressing the minds of
his compeers, yet the fact that they were written and quoted shows
favour was not then for the Crown Imperial. It is coming back to the
present generation; possibly, in England at least, because a certain
number of the old bulbs were preserved in cottage gardens, and so
acquired the reputation of simplicity and old-fashionedness, now so
frequently a passport to favour.
[Illustration:
“THEY SPRING, THEY BUD, THEY BLOSSOME FRESH
AND FAIRE, AND DECKE THE WORLD WITH
THEIR RICH POMPOUS SHOWES”
]
But though the Crown Imperial is being grown in Holland and coming
again into favour in England, it is the smaller members of the
Fritillaria family that are more really popular,—the little
Snake’s-head Fritillary, which in some of its duller colours is native
to Oxfordshire, the red _Recurva_, the golden yellow _Aurea_, and other
expensive varieties of the somewhat insignificant flower. They may all
be seen in Holland, and are regarded with considerable admiration, even
by some of the old and conservative growers. I remember to have seen
one dear old man kneeling before a _Fritillaria aurea_ gently dusting
off the sand which had blown upon its fluffy inside.
Among the new favourites begonias should perhaps be mentioned, although
they are not grown in Holland to anything like the extent they are in
Belgium, where they are raised literally by the million; or in England,
where the great florists, Laing and Veitch, have done so much to
popularise and improve them. They were introduced into Europe about
1776, from Jamaica in the first instance, though subsequently from
other places too; but they do not appear to have been much cultivated
and developed until comparatively lately. Certainly it was not until
quite recently they were to be seen in the bulb fields of Holland; now
they are, and they make very gorgeous patches of colour in the middle
and late summer, when there are few other flowers to be seen. The
treatment they require is unlike that of the Dutch bulb proper. To
begin with, they are tubers not bulbs; to go on with, they are not
planted out till May; and to conclude, they must be stored in dry and
frost-proof houses during the winter months. New varieties are raised
from seed, and in Holland time and attention is being bestowed on them,
so that it is possible they, too, may rank among important Dutch
flowers, though at present they can hardly be said to do so, popular as
they are in this country.
But perhaps of all bulbs grown in Holland the ones which have least
felt the variation of favour for the past three hundred years are
Narcissi. Doubtless they have not always been grown in quite such
quantity as they are now, but they have for very long been grown to a
considerable extent. They have never had the immense vogue that tulips
and hyacinths had at one time, but they have always been well
appreciated. It is true that in Holland to-day amateurs, though they
think well of them, do not as a rule specialise in them, as do many
English; one has to go to England to find discriminating appreciation
of a finely-formed flower among amateurs. But the growers in Holland
know their business, as they have for very many years, and splendid
Narcissi are raised there for the English market.
Early in the seventeenth century we hear of the “Men of the Lowe
Countries” growing “iohnquills” and calling them “trompetts.” Even
before that the still popular _Narcissus maximus_ was a favourite
flower in Dutch gardens, and we know that the great botanists of the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were eager in their
search for and raising of new varieties. We have record of “the Lady
Mattenesse Daffodil” named of Clusius, the first gallant Low Countryman
to name a new variety after a lady. This flower would seem to have
borne more resemblance to some of the ordinary yellow sorts than to the
choice _N. Clusii_, which later generations have named in honour of the
great man himself. There are records, too, of that which was first had
from Vincent Sion, native of Flanders, “an industrious and worthy lover
of fair flowers,” who, however, did not name his flower after himself
or a lady, but grew it and at some time gave offsets to “Mr. George
Wilmer of Stratford Bowe, Esquire, who would need appropriate it to
himself, as if he were the first founder thereof, and call it by his
own name, Wilmer’s double daffodil,”—a proceeding justly condemned by
the botanists and avenged by time; for whereas to-day one looks in vain
for _Wilmer_ in the ordinary catalogue, _Van-Sion_, whether or no named
after the “industrious lover of fair flowers,” is a household word with
daffodil growers.
In seventeenth-century England, as well as Holland, they would seem to
have been interested in the raising of Narcissi and the varying of the
sorts. We have _Gerrard’s Daffodil_, and _Parkinson’s Daffodil_, and
the _Great Rose Daffodil_ of one John Tradecant. It should be
remembered that narcissus and daffodil were synonymous terms with the
old writers, the one being regarded as the Latin, the other as the
English name of the family. It must also be admitted that they classed
as Narcissi things that we do not reckon as such, for instance, the
_Strange Sea Daffodil_ of Parkinson’s list, a plant which, from picture
and description, one is inclined to identify as a dark-coloured
Agapanthus. Also the _White Sea Bastard Daffodil_, which Clusius tells
us is so poisonous that it was “deadly to him that did but cut his meat
with that knife which had immediately before cut this root.” Another
narcissus unknown to us now is the red flower, native to the West
Indies, mentioned by Parkinson. It is true he classes it reluctantly in
accordance with the then taste for classifying rather than with his own
conviction, and with the remark, “Even so until some other can direct
his place more fitly, I shall require you to accept of him in this,
with this description which followeth.” And the description certainly
does not apply to our idea of a red narcissus, that desideratum of all
modern growers. The growers of the past do not seem to have been so
anxious to produce a red variety, but to-day it is the ambition of all
professionals and many amateurs. So far one cannot say they have been
successful, the variety _Will Scarlet_, a short-crowned flower
belonging to the _incomparabilis_ section, is the nearest, but it is
not satisfactory, and is of a very poor shape.
In Holland Narcissi are put in the ground just as summer turns to
autumn. In the fields they are set from three to four inches deep, and
during the severe weather protected by a straw covering some three
inches thick. At least that is found sufficient for the hardier roots,
the more delicate polyanthus varieties want more, many of them
requiring as heavy a covering as is given to hyacinths. They begin
flowering about the middle of March. Some English daffodil enthusiasts
maintain one can have them in bloom out of doors from February to
October, but personally I have never seen any at either extreme date.
In Holland, certainly, they do not reckon to have flowers in the open
much before the middle of March, when the earliest sorts, _Henry
Irving_, _Golden Spur_, etc., begin to show colour. The majority are in
perfection in April, and the latest sorts, such as _Poeticus_ and
_Grandee_, carry us on well into May; but by the end of that month
Narcissi are over in the bulb gardens. In the middle of April the sight
is truly magnificent, sheets of golden flowers in every shade of
yellow; one feels a miser’s wish to keep the living gold and put off
the inevitable time of cutting. The flowers, when they are cut, are
taken at the top, much as tulips are, the stalks and leaves being left
to gradually wither, till in July when the bulbs are lifted they are
quite dead; a sad and rather desolate sight.
[Illustration: BULB TIME, HAARLEM]
Narcissi are very various in their rate of increase, some free-growing
sorts, such as _Emperor_ and _Empress_, _Sir Watkin_ and _Barri_
increase well; but others much more scantily and slowly. The polyanthus
narcissi (N. Tazetta) do not in the main increase so well as most of
the other kinds. The reason of this may be that they are none of them
native to Western Europe, though they have been long grown and much
improved there; their original home is South Europe and Western Asia,
from whence it is thought they spread at some almost prehistoric time
to Northern India, China, and Japan. One rather insignificant species
has of recent years been introduced to Europe from Japan, and for the
moment made a sensation among amateurs out of all proportion to its
merits. There is a small kind very plentiful in Greece to-day; from its
plentifulness some folk have decided it was the original flower of the
Greek legend, but the consensus of opinion is in favour of a
single-flowered one of the Poeticus family—also still to be found in
abundance in Greece. Ovid’s description certainly best fits the latter,
as will be seen from the following translation of his account of the
flower and the metamorphosis of the boy.—He was but sixteen, according
to Ovid, so his flight from the overtures of Echo and his subsequent
astonishment at and passion for his own newly-discovered beauty are
perhaps forgivable; at all events more forgivable than the admiration
of many a subsequent poet Narcissus for himself and all his works.
Soon the rosy flush has left his cheek, and all his goodly
strength is gone, and the very form that Echo once had loved.
He lays his weary head on the green grass, and darkness covers
his longing eyes. And now he has entered the halls of the dead,
and in the Stygian wave still gazes on his own image. The
Naiads, his sisters, with tresses torn, weep for their brother,
the Dryads wail aloud, while Echo wails again. And now they
make ready the pyre and the funeral torches and the bier. But
in vain they seek the dead; they find but a flower of golden
(croceum) hue, its heart enringed by (set round with) white
leaves.[1]
[Footnote 1: I am indebted to Miss Camilla Jebb for this translation.]
It is interesting to quote, in comparison with this, the rendering that
the poet Gay gives of the old tale of the transformation:—
His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves:
Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows;
And in a short-lived flower his beauty blows.
Let vain Narcissus warn each female breast
That beauty’s but a transient gift at best;
Like flowers it withers with th’ advancing year,
And age, like winter, robs the blooming fair.
Slightly suggestive of the boy in _Struwwelpeter_ who took root and
grew sprouts because he would not move when he was told, but eminently
moral.
But whether or no the flower of “vain Narcissus” fame was a polyanthus
or a Poeticus, this is certain, varieties of both kinds grow in Greece,
and apparently have grown there as far back as anything did. Over and
over again Narcissi occur in classic literature, often with the
qualifications purpled or croceum, which suggests the dark centred
Poeticus. Sometimes they are spoken of as the flower of death, the
treacherous sweet-scented blossoms, beguiling in sweetness and
stupefying in effect. Plutarch definitely says they derived their name
from _narce_ = numbness, because of this effect. No such effect is
known now; narcotics in plenty we have, and most of them of vegetable
origin, but none obtained from narcissus. Still, evidently there is
some such tradition in connection with them, for more than one old
writer has regarded them as the flower of death. Milton possibly had
some such tradition in his mind when in _Lycidas_, his _In Memoriam_,
he says:
daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
This reference is, of course, to the English wild Narcissus, the little
yellow daffodil of woods and meadows, no doubt more plentiful in his
day than in ours.
Then, one hopes, there had not begun the reprehensible custom
(described at the close of the eighteenth century) whereby, “In the
counties round London the herb-folks bring prodigious quantities in the
spring of the year, when in bloom, root and all, and sell them about
the streets.” Still, in spite of the efforts of the “herb-folk” and
others, there are wild daffodils yet to be found in parts of England
and Holland. And, on good authority it is stated, all the uniflowered
varieties of to-day are sprung from it; and of those varieties one may
say, as Parkinson did of the _Bastard Daffodils of Divers Kinds_,
“There is much variety in this kind; ... but it is needless to spend a
great deal of time and labour upon such ... flowers, except that in the
beholding of them, we may therein admire the work of the Creator, who
can frame such diversity in one thing. But this is beside the text, yet
not impertinent.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS
The Tulip is the aristocrat of bulbs, the one with whose name is
connected squandered fortunes, romantic tales, long history, and other
attributes of traditional aristocracy. It is also the one which, more
than any, has made Holland famous. To go to see the bulb gardens
usually means to go to Haarlem towards the latter part of April, when
the tulips are at their best and there are literally acres of flowers.
A patch of seven hundred square metres of scarlet tulips, and beyond
perhaps as much of yellow or white, and beyond, with nothing but a
hedge between, others, yet others, everywhere.—It is a wonderful sight.
Red tulips and purple tulips, rose colour, buff colour, yellow and
white and streaked. Though it must be said the streaked tulips are less
than they were, for they are somewhat out of fashion now; it is the
plain-coloured varieties which are most in favour, more especially the
late “cottage” sorts. In earlier days, in the time of the tulip
mania—at its height about 1634 to 1637—the fashion was for variegated
tulips, and the enormous prices that were given were for streaked and
pencilled, late blooming, single flowers; and the more they were
striped, violet and rose on a pure white ground, the more was paid for
them. The following description of what a tulip should be was written
between 1790 and 1797; the prices by then had dropped to comparative
moderation, but the standard of beauty was much the same: “The colours
in greatest estimation in variegated tulips are the blacks, golden
yellow, purple violets, and rose, and vermilion, each of which being
variegated various ways; and such as are striped in 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
tulip.” Some of the varieties famous in the early days are still grown
in Holland, _Louis the XVI._ and the notorious _Semper Augustus_, one
bulb of which is said, at the height of the madness, to have been sold
for as much as 13,000 florins, though the price dropped to fifty when a
paternal government stepped in and put an end to the gamble. Now,
though these two historic names are still known and the bulbs still
grown, neither flower is of great repute for beauty, and, generally
speaking, neither would be so much admired as the self-coloured
sorts—the scarlet _Gesneriana spathulata_, with its intense blue-black
centre, the snow-white _Dora_, or even the insignificant little red
flower, for a single bulb of which eight guineas was asked in London
not many years ago. Asked and readily paid too; from which, one may
conclude, the real tulip mania is not quite dead, though, of course,
the price is a mere trifle compared to those paid in the early
eighteenth century, or even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth,
when, it is reported, a florist of Amsterdam paid £640 for the bulb of
a new species, _The Citadel of Antwerp_. This last man must have been
either a cultivator or a collector buying for the sake of having the
bulb, for by then the gamble, which largely made the great mania what
it was, had long passed away. When the mania was at its height men
obviously did not buy for that reason. The madness, which then
inexplicably affected so large a part of the steady Dutch nation, was
more nearly related to a Stock Exchange gamble than a collector’s
craze; though one cannot help thinking that, without the real existence
of the latter the former would not have been possible, at least not in
that manifestation.
[Illustration: TULIPS IN THEIR PRIME]
There are still many tales told of that time, some supported with
sufficient evidence, some resting on report, all equally remarkable. To
the first class belongs that which can be found in the registers of the
city of Alkmaar, where in 1637 there is an entry of the sale of tulips
for the benefit of the Orphan Hospital, when 120 bulbs were sold for
9000 florins—a florin then about represented a bushel of wheat, so the
approximate equivalent of that sum in modern money is rather startling
even for gambling prices. To the latter class of tales belongs that of
the man who believed himself to be the possessor of a unique tulip,
and, hearing that there was another like it in Haarlem, repaired to
that city, bought the bulb at great cost and crushed it with his foot,
so that his tulip should really be unique. There is the other tale of
the sailor, who, having been given a raw herring at the kitchen door of
a rich merchant and a tulip fancier, picked up some roots which were
lying outside, cooked them with it, and ate them, thinking them to be
onions, and unaware that they were priceless tulips. Which last story
is somewhat hard to believe, for if the rich merchant and tulip fancier
was anything like the Dutchmen of to-day, he would not have left his
priceless bulbs lying about, either by his kitchen door or anywhere
else. And if the sailor was so really foolish as, at that time when
tulips were the things of moment, to mistake an uncooked one for an
onion, he would have been better informed about a cooked one. He would
not, as according to the tale he did, have needed enlightening by the
merchant, who is narrated to have exclaimed, after the event:
“Inconsiderate man! Thou hast ruined me with thy breakfast! I could
have regaled a king with it!” If the king had been so regaled, at least
with cooked tulips, it is possible the royal pleasure would not have
been great, for tulips, according to those who have tried them, are
very poor eating. Parkinson, certainly, says they are pleasant, though
truth compels him to qualify the statement by adding, “at least, not
unpleasant.” He, by his own account, tried them preserved in sugar, and
apparently did not persevere with his experiment, as he ascribes no
medicinal value to them.
It is the custom to say that the romance of tulip-growing has gone; it
is wonderful how often Romance is announced as dead and gone, a
many-lived thing one must think it to need so many death-knells.
Tulip-growing now, it is said, is a mere commercial enterprise, a
growing without interest of hundreds of thousands of the cheapest sorts
and selling them for the best price obtainable; no longer any interest
or individuality in it, no one thinking or caring for new sorts or
history, or anything but price per hundred. It may be; romance is a
strange thing; whether the term is applied to flower or adventure,
callings or institutions, it does not really refer to the concerned
actors and doers, but to the sentiments and opinions of the unconcerned
lookers-on. These unconcerned at one time had a craze for tulips,—then
tulips were romantic; now they are not, and romance is gone. Now these
folk merely order, or let their gardeners order, so many red and so
many white, so many double, single, striped, or plain. There is no more
romance now to them in tulip producing and buying than in grocery
producing and buying: that is to say, they talk little more about the
one than the other, their horticultural conversation is now centred on
hybrid teas and herbaceous borders. It was not so a hundred years ago,
tulips were then in fashion. In an old miscellany of that time there is
a delightful conversation on the tulip subject, the writer purporting
to have overheard a talk between two people he could not see on the
behaviour and condition of persons of importance. Very strange
behaviour it sounded—how a crowned head was feeling the weather, how a
favourite general was doing well, seeing his situation, and, finally,
how one speaker would show the other a _Painted Lady_ and a _Chimney
Sweep_ in the same bed. The writer describes himself as hastening after
to share the sight, and as being delighted to find the conversation
referred to nothing scandalous, but to “the beautiful vegetables” then
in fashion. He may have been delighted, we can give him the benefit of
the doubt—possibly he did not frequent country houses and large
suburban villas. He could hardly have done so, else the talk would not
have had the charm of novelty for him, for wheresoever two or three
glove-gardeners are gathered together—or even where there is only
one—the specific names of varieties of the flower then in fashion fall
like rain on the interested and uninterested alike.
[Illustration:
“HERE ARE TULIPS FOR YOU—WHITE, FOR THE
BRIDAL OR THE BURIAL”
]
Not that the Dutch grower has any quarrel with the glove-gardeners, he
has none at all; if the trend of fashion prevents them from buying
expensive and choice tulips, it also prevents them from caring for the
ones they do buy, and so necessitates the frequent replenishing of
their stock. They are the grower’s chief purchasers, and though he
feels a little hurt when they, ignoring his plain directions for
cultivation, and getting poor results in consequence, complain of the
quality of his bulbs, he never gainsays their taste in varieties. On
the contrary, he compiles his catalogue to what he thinks is their
fancy, and grows by the acre whatever they and their gardeners ordain
to be beautiful. But the real interest and life of bulb-growing did not
begin with the enthusiasm of folk of this kind, nor did it die when
that died. The true grower still feels a holy joy over a new streak of
colour, a new shape of petal; he still has his collectors over the
world looking for novelties; he still sows and hybridises, and
patiently and intelligently works, and feels the connoisseur’s
satisfaction in success, his own or another’s.
Tulips are grown in Holland to-day much as they were two hundred years
ago. The land is very deeply worked in winter, so that the frost may
penetrate and kill mice and other vermin; also if, as is not often the
case round Haarlem, the ground is stiff to soften it fit for the bulbs.
In the spring it is manured: for tulips there is not such heavy
manuring as for hyacinths, these last are by far the fattest liking of
all the bulbs. It is possible, in fact it is often advisable, to grow
tulips one year on the ground which was used for hyacinths the year
before, this without any further enriching. After the spring manuring
many of the bulb fields are let to market men, who grow vegetables
there, but with the understanding that all must be removed and the
ground cleared in August, for, though tulips are not put in until the
end of September, some other bulbs are planted earlier, so the rule is
usually made to apply to all fields. The tulip bulbs are set by hand,
four or five inches apart and four inches below the surface, and left
untouched until it is time to cover them with straw for the winter. The
covering in their case is very light, not more than half an inch thick,
for tulips are perfectly hardy, and need no protection from the cold;
but the sandy soil is so light that, unless something were put on it,
it would be blown away in the high winds and the bulbs left bare. The
flowering time covers a good while, beginning in mild springs with _Duc
van Tholl_ in the early days of March, and ending with the
late-blooming May varieties well on in that month. There is one rare
specimen of tulip from Central Asia, _Tulipa kaufmanniana_, which
flowers in Holland in February, but as yet this is not widely grown. It
is, unfortunately, necessary to cut off the flower heads of all
varieties, excepting such as are being saved for seed, before their
beauty is quite spent. Happily, however, the cutting does not have to
be done too soon after the opening, unless the weather is very rainy.
Wet engenders some disease in the flower, which goes downwards and
infects the roots unless the blooms are cut off in time. They are
usually cut stalkless, really beheaded; rows of them so treated are
rather a woful sight, although the delicate colour of their broad
leaves makes the gardens where they are still beautiful. In June they
are taken out of the ground. The new young bulbs are found to be
developed from within the old, which gradually shrivel away to give
room to the young; in the end there is nothing of the parent left but a
few hard scales, which can be removed by hand.
New varieties are usually raised from seed, though some are sports;
there is at Haarlem one such now, a fine yellow tulip, which, a few
years ago, “sported” from a well-known red variety; the man who owns it
found it when the bulbs were in bloom. It is not a “rogue” but a true
bulb, in leaf and flower representing the old red type, only in colour
yellow instead of red.
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.”
[Illustration:
“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:
Whose leaves with their crimson glow
Hide the heart that lies burning and black below.
From the description it is clear that the Persian tulip was
self-coloured and red, possibly something like the _Gesneriana
spathulata_.
The date of its coming to Western Europe is not much more certain than
the actual place from whence it came. The introduction has been
ascribed to Busbecq, ambassador from the Emperor Maximilian to the
Porte—it is astonishing how many flowers that enterprising man is
accredited with introducing to his own and other western countries. He
is reported to have seen tulips in bloom on the road between Adrianople
and Constantinople in mid-winter, and, struck with their beauty,
brought some home with him. Then there is the story of a bulb being
brought to England by a sailor and given by him to an apothecary’s
wife, as a token of his gratitude for her kindness to him in sickness.
According to this story, the bulb first bloomed in 1557, but according
to some authorities tulips were not seen here at all until 1577. The
sailor story, when told in detail, offers several other difficulties.
It rather presupposes that the man thought the bulb of value, which he
might or might not have done. And it certainly demands that the
recipient of it should have been a good gardener and woman of business,
for she is narrated to have at once grown and multiplied her tulip and
sold the offsets for a guinea apiece—a large price in Elizabethan
England for a new and as yet unfashionable flower, introduced merely by
a country apothecary’s wife. It also puts the date of the first
flowering in England as 1559, the date when, it is said, Conrad Gesner,
the Swiss botanist and name-father to the _Gesneriana_, brought the
tulip from Constantinople to Augsburg. There is another story which
ascribes the first introduction of the tulip into England to Sir Philip
Sidney, who is reputed to have brought it from the Continent.
Personally I prefer that account; it is in keeping with the character
of the great Elizabethan, also it offers less difficulties. Sidney, we
know, was on a diplomatic mission to the German court, where he made a
friend of William of Orange; this in 1577, by which time tulips,
whether first introduced by Gesner to Augsburg or by Busbecq to
Maximilian, would have had time to grow and increase in Germany and the
Low Countries, and might well have attracted the attention of the
widely interested and cultivated Sidney.
But how they came and when they came does not greatly matter now. Come
they did, both to Holland and to England, and early find their way to
favour and to cultivation and variation. The date of the earliest
varieties is as unknown as the date of introduction, but some are
certainly very old, many late single kinds, Darwin tulips among them,
have been found by Dutch growers in old Flemish gardens with long
histories, other sorts seem to be quite as old. The tulip, like the
dog, appears to have taken very kindly to domestication and variation
for the pleasure of man.
[Illustration: DARWIN TULIPS]
There are, of course, wild tulips in some countries, the _Sylvestris_
of Italy, for instance, though none are native to Holland. They are
accredited to England, and said to be indigenous in Gloucestershire,
but the thing is very doubtful, much more likely have they been
introduced—as rabbits to Australia—and taken to the West Country. There
is a garden in Devonshire where they multiply wonderfully, and where,
to a certain extent, a record of their multiplication is kept.
Incorporated in the lease of the house is a clause to the effect that
the lessee, when he leaves, shall, besides the usual “habitable
condition,” etc., leave so many hundred of a special kind of red tulip
in the garden. The which is rather a pleasing clause to read in these
days, when no one may put a window in his woodshed without the
permission of the Urban District Council. It is pleasing to realise
that a man, though dead, has that much right over his own property, and
can perpetuate his fancy for red tulips, or (as is the case of an east
county estate) ordain that the garden he loved shall continue to be as
it has been since the days of Anne Boleyn—that, not only shall no
Council say him nay, but no Englishman would ever wish it, on the
contrary they all, privately, think it a very right and proper thing.
Perhaps it will be permitted to close these desultory remarks on tulips
past and present, English and Dutch, with a few lines from two early
Victorian poets. The early Victorians loved the tulip, and, as usual
when they loved a flower, they enshrined it “in poesy,” a rather
doubtful compliment:—
And sure more lovely to behold
Might nothing meet the wistful eye,
Than crimson fading into gold
In streaks of fairest symmetry.
This sounds like the old original _Duc van Tholl_, which is almost ugly
enough to deserve such a fate; at least in some people’s opinion,
although an old grower, once contemplating it in admiration, exclaimed,
“It is a grand flower—grand! But the English amateurs now have no
taste. They no longer know what a tulip should be! This, this I tell
you, this is a Tulip!”
One other quotation, this from Montgomery, admired of our grandmothers.
He would seem to have been planting a tulip bulb, evidently one of the
streaked florist’s variety, and the thought of the flower to come moved
him to utterance worthy of the “Elegant Album”:—
Two shapely leaves will first unfold;
Then, on a smooth, elastic stem,
The verdant bud shall turn to gold,
And open in a diadem.
Not one of Flora’s brilliant race
A form more perfect can display;
Art could not feign more simple grace,
Nor Nature take a line away.
Yet, rich as morn, of many a hue,
When flushing clouds through darkness strike,
The Tulip’s petals shine in dew,
All beautiful, but none alike.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS
There is, without doubt, a certain charm in bulb barns; not perhaps
quite the charm of an old English barn, wherein there is ever a brown
twilight and never a straight line, and it is still possible to think
of the Good People coming to shelter on wet nights. Dutch barns, even
the least well kept of them, are too orderly for that. They are rather
too foursquare and deficient in the unexpected annexes and the
mysterious doors leading to nowhere and anywhere which are part of the
true fascination of barns. Nevertheless they have attractions; they are
warm-coloured, lofty, silent, and full of a pleasant dry smell; they
are essentially not people’s houses though, especially at some seasons
of the year, they are houses of quiet, stored life.
[Illustration: A BULB HOUSE]
Every grower must have a barn; the big men, of course, more than one,
the number and size varying in proportion to the gardens. Those of the
little men are sometimes rather makeshift places, wherein, at other
times of the year, other things are kept and the true character of a
bulb barn somewhat lost. The true character is, pre-eminently,
orderliness; seen at perfection a bulb barn is, in its own way, as
typically Dutch as a hyacinth, it is the perfection of order and
system, and yet somehow cosily human too. Round the sides of the great
barns there are shelves with upturned edges; down the centre is a
stand, or two stands with an aisle between, if the barn is very large,
and these, too, are all shelves or trays, tray upon tray nearly to the
roof. Against the walls there are light ladders, easy to move when the
upper trays have to be reached. In the corners are heavier and longer
ladders leading to the stories above—when there are any, as there often
are in the bigger barns. Here the bulbs are brought, sorted according
to kind and size and quality; here they accumulate from early June,
when the snowdrops and aconites are brought in, on through the summer
months till all are harvested and the barns are full, wonderful quiet
stores of waiting life.
Many of the bulb barns have windows, herein also differing from the
true English barn, where the primitive fashion of lighting by the open
door still maintains, and is all that is necessary. In Holland it is
necessary to have at least some barns with windows, and windows that
open, for they have to be left open when the tulips are first brought
in, so that the bulbs may dry and get ready to be cleaned. The cleaning
of all bulbs, which consists in removing the old outer husk and
presenting the bulb dry and shining as we see it, is usually done by
women in a big barn not far from the grower’s office. The work is not
hard, though the hours are long, and the wages, seeing that it is
unskilled labour, rather low. The principal objection to it is the skin
irritation that it causes, though one hopes that those daily employed
get hardened to that. One sees quite old women at the work,
grandmothers sitting on benches or upturned baskets, their brown
wrinkled faces bending over the bulbs, their long gold earrings,
possibly the only treasure left of some inherited store, dangling. And
beside them young girls, with round rosy cheeks and demure eyes, which
do not—at least openly—seek those of the men who pass to and fro
carrying the deep baskets full of bulbs. One seldom or never sees any
of the typical peasant head-dresses among the women who work at the
bulb-cleaning, presumably the workers are not drawn from the class who
still wear them. But one does see a beautiful neatness—a general
impression of cleanness, of blue cotton, neat straight hair, and wooden
shoes; an appearance a good deal more neat and picturesque than the
average of poorer women-workers in England; unless, perhaps, one
excepts those who are employed in one branch of pottery-work, where the
necessary uniform is print sun-bonnets and overalls. There is no
flirting in the barn, practically no intercourse between the men and
women, the men simply carry in the basketsful of freshly-lifted bulbs
to be cleaned, and carry out those that are done. No doubt when work
ceases or dinner-hour comes some young people find each other out. It
would be clear waste and much to be regretted if they did not.
The men employed in the bulb gardens work from about six in the morning
till seven at night in the summer; in the winter, of course, when the
daylight is short and the work less, not so long. The thing which
strikes one most about them is how much cleaner they are than any
English workers on the land. But it is not fair to ascribe this
entirely to native characteristics and ideals; the soil and conditions
of the bulb district are entirely different from those of any
agricultural part of England. It has been said of the men employed in
the bulb fields that they do not care about flowers, merely regarding
them as daily work and having no more æsthetic appreciation of them
than of turnips. Of course it may be so, but personally I rather doubt
it; although, as has been urged, they certainly do not grow flowers for
themselves. In the bulb district, one never sees blooming cottage
gardens as in England, but then land there is so valuable that
comparatively few people can afford to have gardens at all; and those
that do are both so poor and so thrifty that they cannot keep them for
pleasure only, but must turn their wee patch to the best food-producing
account. In the bulb district there is no waste land; no broad
margins—“God’s gardens,”—beside the road; no tangle of leeks and roses
beside a tumbling-down cottage door; no grass-grown marigold-studded
stretch of brickwork surrounding the common pump. There is no waste, no
weeds, no margins, and, alas! but little beauty about the dwellings of
the work-people. Yet none the less it seems they love flowers, often
they are to be seen carrying them home, and seldom one passes houses
with no vase of them in the window in blooming time. And this, surely,
argues a real love of flowers, when one comes to think that they are in
themselves neither rare nor valuable here, many of the cut blooms
thrown away almost as much as the poppies in our English corn-fields.
Of course a certain number of the flowers are sold in Dutch towns—as in
the towns of other countries, some few growers even may grow a small
quantity for that special purpose. But, again, in the purchasing of
them, the charge that the working-classes have no æsthetic love of
flowers would seem to be negated, for, though the prices of cut
flowers, considering the quantity grown, are relatively high, many of
the purchasers are workmen. One sees them on pay-day carrying home
their purchases with the same evident care and admiration that one sees
similarly bestowed by the better class of English mechanics and
workmen, when on Saturdays they carry home the bunches of wallflower
and violets that they buy in the streets.
[Illustration: FLOWER-MARKET, HAARLEM]
There are in Holland, besides the workmen and the great growers, others
concerned in the bulb industry, a whole lot of very small growers,
simple folk, who for the most part live in the numerous little villages
around Haarlem, Alkmaar, and Leyden. They own but one field, or perhaps
two, and combine with bulb-raising vegetable growing or cow-keeping.
They, with their families, do all the cultivation themselves, planting
and lifting the bulbs, the old folk or the children cleaning them,
working in the patriarchal co-operative way. These men may be seen in
Haarlem on Mondays in the bulb season (August to October); they come to
offer their bulbs to the exporters, who cannot for themselves grow
enough of some of the sorts in most demand, or who do not find it worth
their while to give up their land to producing the cheaper varieties.
Later on the bulbs themselves will come to Haarlem, by canal boat—if
the canal is handy, or perhaps on the back of the man who raised them,
or perhaps brought by the good-wife, who may come barefoot along the
sandy road, only donning her shoes on the outskirts of the town. The
authorities of Haarlem will have no bare feet in their streets, their
sense of delicacy forbids; even the fishwives of Zandvoort, who walk
better than almost any other western women, have to put on the wooden
shoes they carry, in addition to their burden of fish, when they have
crossed the sand dunes and near the city.
But, of course, not all the less-important growers are in such a small
way; some of them are substantial well-to-do men cultivating quite a
considerable quantity of land. Certain of them grow almost exclusively
for one or another special exporter, so that they seem to the
uninitiated to be his men, though in reality they are not at all. It is
these men who may sometimes be seen during the bulb season in the
exporters office, or sitting with him in the veranda of his house,
talking of the weather and the condition of trade over a glass of
schiedam and a Dutch cigar, in the old-fashioned leisurely way that
still maintains in parts of Holland. Cheery, comfortable folk these,
speaking neither English, French, nor German; Dutch of the Dutch, and
not easily to be known by the foreigner.
In the ordinary bulb barns there are two things to be guarded against,
mice and fire. Against the latter there is insurance, and one would
think there should not be much danger of it in those barns where there
is a rule forbidding the workmen to smoke while within. There are some
barns, however, where there is no such rule; where the master feels
that justice demands he should allow his men the liberty which he, with
the true Dutch love of tobacco, cannot do without himself. There is one
dear old man who usually smokes at meals and very often in bed, to the
danger of his bed-curtains; I do not think that he, even if cruel fate
compelled him to refrain himself, could find it in his heart to forbid
his workmen the well-loved pipe; certainly they all smoke everywhere in
his barns, but, so far as I have heard, he has never suffered loss by
fire.
Mice can give much trouble to bulb growers; they are very partial to
some kinds of bulbs; they eat them in the ground unless they are driven
out by deep digging and laying the earth open to the frost beforehand.
In the barns they naturally assume that the grower has kindly put up a
good store for them. But by traps and cats and poison and wonderful
Dutch orderliness they are kept under. In a bulb barn at night one
hears few of the mysterious rustlings and patterings that make an
English barn suggestive of hid but active life.
[Illustration: HYACINTH FLOWERS GOING TO MARKET]
There is one other thing to be guarded against in some few barns, that
is frost. Not in the generality, of course, the ones where are
accumulated the ordinary bulbs of the trade; but in the ones where
there are stored things for spring planting, such as gladioli,
begonias, hemerocallis, dahlias, and other and choicer bulbs and
tubers, the frost is a very important consideration. Some barns are
very carefully protected against frost; some I know are carefully and
systematically warmed during the winter months, and never, winter and
summer, is the range of buildings empty. Standing in one of these, a
curious thought comes; one realises, as one looks at the crowded
shelves and remembers those of other barns beyond, that, could some
cataclysm destroy the ornamental flora of the world, but leave
untouched this range of barns with their contents (as Noah’s ark in the
Deluge), there would still be a good start for repeopling the world
with flowers. Representatives from all quarters of the globe are to be
found in those barns, bulbs proper, and corms, and tubers, and all the
variously named houses of stored plant life. Besides the hyacinth and
tulip of historic fame, and the humbler crocus and snowdrop, there are
calochortus of California, tigridias of Mexico, begonias of Jamaica,
tuberoses of Persia, gloxinias and achimenes, cannas and crinums,
amaryllis and arums—flowers native to all parts of the world, brought
in the first instance by indefatigable collectors, who often have faced
real enough perils in their work—the cold in Siberia, the heat in
Africa, hunger and thirst, the ever probable risk of robbery and
violence of the Kurds in Central Asia, the happy hunting-ground _par
excellence_ of collectors. No romance in the bulb industry now? Why, it
is full of romance! And not the smallest of it, at least in the eyes of
some, is the patient work, the ceaseless, never-beaten perseverance and
experiment by which the adventurously brought plants are acclimatised
to the chilly western countries, and cultivated and varied to the
manifold forms in which we find them now grown in garden and
green-house, and catalogued under various names.
The names are something of a trouble to growers, at least some that I
know. “Why,” asked one who, be it remembered, regarded his work with
seriousness and veneration, “Why will your English people call the
flowers by such foolish names? For an instance, ‘Torch Lilies!’ Where
is the torch? Where the lily? It is no lily, see the root, see the
flower. And for torch, or for ‘flame flower,’ as you sometimes also
call it, there is no resemblance; there is even none of the
waywardness, the unsteadiness or quivering of flames; these things, I
grant you, are in some flowers, as the pampas grass, but not in this,
it is a stiff, a formal flower. Yes, more like to a red-hot poker, as
also you call it. If you must have some other name than Kniphofia
(though I do not myself perceive that it is necessary or the one easier
than the other), if you must, I say, well then, it is perhaps best you
have ‘red-hot poker,’ it is at worst but childish and shows no mistake
in classification. But you would far sooner have it a lily, I know; all
things must be called ‘lily’ now, I cannot tell why—Gladiolus, ‘the
Sword Lily,’ Vallota, ‘the Scarborough Lily,’—the _Scarborough Lily_!
One can almost as well have called it the Margate Potato!
“It is the one thing I have against the English amateurs—not all, of
course, but many—they will not call a plant by its name, they will have
what they call a ‘simple’ or perhaps ‘old-fashioned’ name. But it is
ridiculous. If a flower has long had a simple name, as the primrose,
the foxglove, well and good; if it has had it in the common language so
long or longer than it has another of the botanists, why then one has
no quarrel with a man for using it. But if it is a flower of late days,
and there has come to it first the name of the botanist—the man who
makes it some other ‘simple’ name, which is also quite erroneous, and
seems to class it as lily or as some other when it is almost as soon a
cabbage—is nothing less than a child. Nevertheless for these we must
disfigure our catalogue with such names as Torch Lilies and the like.”
And certainly he and other growers do so “disfigure” their catalogues,
for a grower is a man of business. A rather curious mixture of the
commercial and the connoisseur; a practical man of business and a
gardener, but, above all things, one who loves his work. With the Dutch
grower, at least those of the older school, and I think the modern too,
work stands first. There is no hastening through with it, so as to
devote time and energies to sports and hobbies; sport does not play a
large part in the Dutch grower’s life, and other hobbies are made
tributary to the one great interest. There was one old man who was at
heart an artist, in his far-off youth it is possible he cherished
dreams; but when necessity and circumstance made him a grower he put
the dreams away, though he kept his paint-box. On a Saturday sometimes,
locked safely in his office, he still took out the little box of
somewhat dried paints; he could no longer draw, his hands, steady
enough for any delicate operations of his work, had long lost their
skill. But still he sometimes carefully coloured the illustrations in
his catalogues, the real flower standing in a glass before him, and the
names of the paints he employed set down, so that he might more fitly
describe the true colours of the flower in the next catalogue compiled.
They were not always beautiful results he produced, but there was
something quaintly beautiful and withal pathetic about them and him.
[Illustration: A BULB-GROWER’S GARDEN]
Other growers there are whose tastes are scientific, or perhaps for
photography or the microscope. These, too, are turned to account;
exquisite photographs of flowers illustrate the bulb lists; patient
examination of pollen and plant parasites, careful and systematic
experiments with soils and fertilisers, give help and enlightenment in
the growing and varying of the bulbs. Others there may be who have had
some thought of another profession before family circumstances gave
them to this life, but they are not the worse growers on that account.
They would not enlarge leisure to practise arms if their tastes were
military, or to read theology if their leaning was towards the
ministry; but they would be content to do their duty truly and
honestly, serve God and love their neighbour, and give to the work they
had undertaken the whole of themselves.
This, then, above all things strikes one, a grower is a man steeped in
his work; he lives in the midst of it, he rises with it, and goes to
bed with it. On his few holidays he goes to see the achievements of
others in it, or, better still, the working of nature. He goes to see
other things too, no doubt, he has other interests—pictures, or music,
or literature, or languages—he is no narrow uncultivated man; but his
work stands first, a long, long way first, he and it are curiously and
indissolubly one. So for this reason I say at the last, as I said at
the first, those who would see and know the bulb gardens of Holland
should also know the men who for generations have grown the bulbs, and
loved and understood them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDICES
... dans leur sympathie, ils m’ont dû garder place,
Car ils ne savent pas donner à moitié,
On conserve longtemps un beau fruit dans la glace,
Les gens de climat froid sont de chaude amitié.
Et puisque vous avez cette aimable pensée
De vouloir que mes vers vous présentent là-bas,
Dites bien tout d’abord à la foule empressée
Que mon cœur se souvient des nobles Pays-Bas.
Du pays généreux qui ne sait pas proscrire,
Qui s’ouvre à tout martyr, à tout persécuté
Où chaque citoyen dès l’enfance respire
Avec le vent marin, l’air de la liberté.
Enfin de ce pays que l’art et la pensée
Plus que tous ses trésors, rendent illustre et grand,
Et que vous voit passer dans sa gloire passée
Esprit de Spinoza, palette de Rembrandt!
FRANÇOIS COPPÉE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I.—INTRODUCTION
Saint-Simon, writing in the year 1768, declares there were at that time
in Haarlem nearly two thousand named varieties of the hyacinth, and we
may suppose they had already been about forty years in cultivation on a
soil which seemed particularly adapted for the purpose,—a fine upper
stratum of grey sand, superposed by the action of the sea on a thin
subsoil of peat, so that Nature prepared, it seems, many thousand years
in advance to produce the delicately-tinted and exquisitely-scented
flower, which rises as if by magic out of the cold earth in a few
weeks’ space.
One well-named variety, “Sceptre of David,” reminds one of the long
moral preparation of one people chosen out of the nations of the earth
(a stiff soil to work), before the long-desired of the hills should
come, when there should come a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a
flower should rise up out of his root.
If there are “correspondences” in the material and spiritual worlds,
the flower that cometh up in a day has its root in the ages.
The hyacinth is one of the most perfect results of man’s Art—Art, for
Saint-Simon is persuaded that the hyacinth has become what it is
principally through cultivation, and without human patience and
perseverance—if nature had been left entirely alone—a much less
pleasing and exquisite flower would have appeared.
Every year new varieties are developed, and hope springs eternal in the
breast of the cultivator. Haarlem, the Paradise of Flowers, may be
especially described as the home of the hyacinth.
Upon his arrival at Haarlem, the stranger is so dazzled with the
spectacle of the wonderful and brilliantly coloured carpet spread
before his eyes, that he does not at first realise there is yet further
joy to be found in the singular beauty of certain species and varieties
taken individually.
There he sees acres of hyacinths, double and single, in uninterrupted
ranges of pure colour; the only intervals between the rows being the
little grey sand paths, to enable the cultivator to reach the flowers.
It is difficult for the imagination to picture a piece of earth so
brilliantly enamelled with flowers, and yet such variety and beauty in
detail. The rarest and finest specimens are put apart from the rest in
chosen spots, and these again are arranged in symmetrical order, with
such taste and so unsullied and trim, that one can hardly believe
Nature has been allowed any hand at all in the arrangement. The
florist’s art seems to have triumphed almost too completely. Well, one
may say the florists of Haarlem have played the predominant part, and
their long experience, aided by the succours of reason, have shown them
how to assist Nature by seconding her efforts, and thus to raise her to
a stage beyond herself. In any case, the flowers they cultivate seldom
reach such a high state of development elsewhere. However active and
industrious they may be, no amateur, with all his talents, has ever
reached to such surprising perfection—in strength and form of stem and
blossoms; or to such brilliancy of colouring, though many possessing
both talent and experience have spared neither trouble nor expense in
their endeavours to produce the same result. They are inclined to
attribute their want of success to the nature of their climate and the
soil, and like to regard Haarlem as a place especially privileged in
these respects.
If amateurs had any idea of the spirit of emulation rife among the
Haarlem growers, and the way their whole attention is absorbed,—how
unceasingly they labour and continually verify their experiments,
always reflecting and improving upon them and making fresh
combinations,—they would then know the work is not impossible, and they
need only be endowed with the indomitable qualities of the Dutchman,
and they might produce the same results.
There is no doubt that there exists, even in Haarlem, a sensible
difference between growers of the first class and the more second-rate
cultivators; for, although all are imbued more or less with the same
spirit, and enjoy the same advantages of soil, climate, etc., yet some,
through learning and experience, rise superior to the rest in this line.
If in other countries amateur growers kept more in touch with one
another, and co-operated as do the Haarlem cultivators, there would be
less occasion for despair. For a good deal of their success comes from
their united efforts and experiments, so that among them all they have
many ways of knowing how to preserve bulbs, to propagate them, and
guard them from destructive accidents.
Nobody knows exactly where hyacinths come from originally—the name of
the hyacinth called “Orientalis,” whose origin can be traced back till
it is lost in the obscurity of ages—seems to imply that this flower
originated in the East, and there has been much discussion about the
fact that Moses in the book of Exodus speaks of the colour of the
hyacinth—but whether he refers to it only as a colour, or as a flower,
or as a precious stone, it is impossible to say—for it has been
differently translated in various languages. Saint-Simon tells us that
Dioscorides, in the time of Vespasian, describes a flower he calls
“Hyacinthos” in these words: “L’Hyacinthe a les feuilles des plantes
bulbeuses et la tige dodrantale (c’est-à-dire de trois paulmes, pans ou
empans de haut, on n’est pas d’accord sur cette mesure non plus),
faible, et plus mince que le petit doigt, de couleur verte, dont le
haut s’incline sous le poids d’une tête chargée de fleurs
purpurescentes.” People have argued indefinitely on the precise shade
of “purple,” and to this day they have not decided if it should be more
red than blue or more blue than red. The general opinion seems to be
that the original hyacinth was the colour of the natural wild hyacinth
(which is a Scilla?) which grows in the woods, where the red variety is
not nearly as commonly found as the blue.
On the other hand, the first species may have been red, for in old
fables it seems the hyacinth was thought to be red. Ovid relates how a
flower sprang from the blood of the young Hyacinthus,[2] whom Apollo
slew by accident with a quoit. Others, like Pliny and Pausanias, say
the blood of Ajax, slain near Salamis, was changed into this flower.
[Footnote 2: Unless blue blood was spilt.]
Whatever its original colour, and whatever country it came from, it is
certain that many species have been produced by the florists of
Haarlem, and have entirely originated in their gardens. Yet it is to be
remembered that all came from the old original stock, however different
they have now become. Their natural simplicity has been lost to a
certain extent.
Florists divide hyacinths into four classes:
1. _The Single Hyacinth_—the corolla divided into six segments.
2. _Semi-Double_—only slightly double, with a few petals irregularly
disposed behind the single.
3. _Double_—the outer petals lined with an equal number of other
petals in regular order.
4. _Full Hyacinth_—which has a heart as full of petals as it can hold.
These four classes furnish a great number of varieties. We cannot
define further without going into their distinguishing features and
numerous subdivisions.
The Full Hyacinth possesses the greater number and best varieties. It
is important a hyacinth should belong to the best (one of full)
varieties—but this is not sufficient to constitute a good flower. The
petals should grow in very regular order—especially those within the
heart of the flower, and the petals should as well be curved back very
evenly at their tip. They should also be of a beautiful clear and
decided colour, and this is a great charm in a hyacinth. As well as
being as perfect and decided as possible, the colour of the inner
should harmonise agreeably with the colour of the outer petals.
In this respect there is nothing to be found to surpass the Gloria
Florum Suprema[3]—the blossoms being perfectly disposed the full length
of the stem, which rises tall and very straight, but is, unfortunately
a little too thin to support the weight of the flowers. The petals are
very pure white, and their tips fold back with the greatest regularity,
forming a perfectly symmetrical bud (or button). Colours such as blue
and black, red and white are satisfactory combinations. White
hyacinths, as a rule, are the most delicately shaded, but each variety
has a beauty entirely its own.
[Footnote 3: No longer in existence.]
Of every colour there are kinds which obtain high prices, but the
beauty or merit of a flower is not exactly determined by the monetary
value—for people pay for novelty; the rarity it is which enhances the
value. However, they must, besides, have other essential qualities.
Gloria Mundi and François Ist, and other blues, which used to be the
only ones which could at all compete with Gloria Florum Suprema, have
at last found their rival among the white varieties. “Og Roi de Basan,”
“Le Comte de Provence,” etc., lose nothing by comparison. Some of the
reds, Rex Rubrorum and Mine d’Or have as many points in their favour.
There are now hyacinths of almost every shade. But only at Haarlem are
thousands of varieties and shades to be seen together, and there one
can feast one’s eyes to one’s heart’s content. When a new kind is
raised from seed it causes a great sensation.
Saint-Simon, after expatiating at length on the endurance of the
hyacinth through centuries of growth, ever reproducing itself with
renewed vigour,—showing no sign of exhausting the stock, says:
“Cependant cet oignon si merveilleux, éternel, pour ainsi dire, dans
l’imagination et présent aux yeux pendant tant de siècles, ne dure
effectivement que quatre à cinq ans.”
The hyacinth is propagated by its offshoots or young bulbs. It also
reproduces itself from seed. From the seed new varieties are produced.
Hyacinth bulbs will bloom in any direction they are placed, even upside
down—the flower will grow downwards in a vase of water.
If you take the bulb at the moment of planting, that is, when it is
beginning to show the tender green point of its shoot, the first thing
to do is to examine if it is healthy. It should be round and full, and
not shrivelled; though each variety differs slightly in form, yet all
should be properly rounded in appearance, because this shows the bulb
is in good condition, nor should it be too light in weight for its
size. If it is, it shows it is drying up inside and is deficient in
sap. But to be small in size does not matter, for some of the beautiful
red varieties have very small bulbs, and very often single hyacinths
have larger bulbs than the double.
There is a kind of double hyacinth, white with a red heart, which is
known by its outer tunic, which is always wrinkled and defective. In
spite of its appearance, by its weight and form one may judge if it is
in good condition. The roots often grow like a crown round the base of
the bulb, and the space in the centre is called the “eye” of the roots.
This space is covered with a membrane; and in choosing bulbs, this is
the part you must first examine carefully to see if there are any signs
of decay. There should be no marks of damp or of mildew in the eye at
the base of the bulb.
When the time draws near for planting, the bulb should show little
swollen white points at the base where the roots are to come.
The tunics or suberous leaves (what is called skin on an ordinary
onion) are always covered over with a thin, dry, reddish skin, which
falls off after a time, but is at first useful in protecting the other
tunics when the bulb is in the earth, for it is planted in the dampest
season of the year. No tunic entirely embraces the circumference of the
bulb, but only about two-thirds of it. The tunics are really an
extension (in the bulb) of the long green leaves, only the part of
these leaves which show green above ground fall off in the end of the
year, and the base of them, which remain within the bulb as tunics,
spread and increase till, when they are pushed by each year’s growth
from the centre to the outside of the bulb (by the growth of new stem
and leaves within), they get weaker and thinner, until at last they
turn into the dry, red, outside skin, which finally decays and falls
off.
The tunics are of the same substance as the rest of the bulb (which is
composed of fleshy scales), and the difference is so gradual that it is
impossible to see where the fleshy substance of the bulb begins to
change into the suberous quality of the leaves, and yet there is a very
marked difference between the bulb and its leafy scales; they are,
however, an undetachable whole, and you cannot pull off the inner tunic
leaves of the hyacinth from the base, as you can pull off the leaves of
an artichoke.
As soon as the bulb is taken from the ground it begins to grow and
increases rapidly during the three months it lies on the shelf, and all
this time it lives on the sap-nourishment accumulated by it when in the
earth. The sap concentrated in the bulb can preserve it for a great
length of time, but it is not quite sufficient to enable the bulb to
finish all the work it has to do, and if it flowers it will not have
strength enough to bring its seeds to maturity. (Saint-Simon here
observes that this is not attributable to the bulb having no roots, but
to its inward indisposition.)
[Illustration:
“WHEN SPRING UNLOCKS THE FLOWERS TO PAINT
THE LAUGHING SOIL”
]
Some people imagine that a bulb which has been kept from flowering can
reserve itself for the following year. Many such experiments have been
made, and bulbs have been kept back on the shelves and have not been
allowed to flower; they have invariably perished, and, growers say,
scarcely a year passes that they have not tried the experiment,—they
have lost every bulb which was not put into the ground. As a rule the
sap in a bulb will be sufficient nourishment during its ordinary growth
till January or February, but after that it will begin to grow mouldy
and go bad. The moment it is put in earth or over water, in the proper
season, the bulb, which is just beginning to be exhausted, pumps up sap
so vigorously that it begins at once to throw out roots from almost the
first day, and growers dare not move them again, even a few hours after
they have been put in, to send them away, however carefully packed,
even a short distance, for fear the fresh moisture they have sucked up
so quickly should cause them to rot, and they even consider it a
dangerous process to change them from one place to another, in the same
bed, if they have been but half an hour in the ground. The roots, which
are in such a hurry to show themselves when first the bulbs are
planted, perish as quickly as they grow. They stop growing before the
flower is in full bloom, and are always quite dried up before the seed
begins to ripen. While the root is perishing the flower continues, the
stem grows, and all the flowers expand completely. When the flower is
quite over and the seed is left to ripen, the sap goes into the leaves,
which lengthen considerably, then these die in their turn, till they
separate from the bulb of themselves.
CHAPTER II.—BULBS
It has already been shown what sort of appearance the _outer tunics_
present, and it has been explained how the tunics in general are
formed. We are now going to push our examination further. After
divesting the bulb of seven or eight tunics (or fans), one comes (_A_)
upon a little thin flattened thread of crimson colour, like a line. It
is, as it were, embedded in one of the tunics; it starts from the base
of the bulb and rises to the extreme top.
Continuing to take away again the same number of tunics, one comes upon
a second thread (_B_) like the first, _A_, only that it is less red and
thicker; then, for the third time, taking off another seven or eight
tunics, one meets with a third line or fillet (_C_), very like the two
first, with this difference, it is quite white and much thicker. Under
the last fillet are the new leaves (or fans), beginning to bud, about
seven or eight in number, and in the centre of them is the stem, which
is going to flower in a few months.
Now all the tunics are supposed to be taken off, and only the three
fillets or threads which we spoke of are left (_A_, _B_, _C_). Fillet
_A_ is all that is left (within the bulb) of the stem which flowered
eighteen months ago.
Fillet _C_ is the remains of the stem of the last flower borne by the
bulb, six months before.
Fillet _D_ is the stem which is about to flower in six months’ time
(the flower buds are already sufficiently formed to be seen), and _E_
contains the stem and tunic leaves, which are to come into bud in
another eighteen months.
If, when the bulb is in full flower, you divest it of all its tunics,
till you come to the flower stem,—you will find at the base of it a
very tiny bud; if you take away the stem, which easily breaks off, you
will find the bud remains firmly attached to the base of the bulb. If
you open the bud with a penknife, you will see it is composed of six or
seven little leaves (or fans), and inside a tiny stem, furnished with
buds, which has begun to grow already, and from the moment the bulb is
laid on the shelves it increases till the time comes for putting it
again in the earth. We have been speaking all this time of the double
hyacinth. The single hyacinth is somewhat differently constructed, for
it usually throws out several shoots from the sides as well as from the
centre. The single bulb does not appear to last so long, for its
fillets are fewer, but the number of flowering stems it produces, and
the irregularity of their growth, makes it difficult to follow it in
its various stages of development as exactly as one can the double. By
dint of observing, year after year, bulbs, both those in a good state
of preservation and some partially decomposed, it has been discovered
that the bulb always loses the same number of outer tunics as it gains
interiorly new ones. When once a bulb has acquired the regulation
number of tunics, it will always keep to the same number year by year,
and nevertheless every year it is putting forth seven or eight from its
centre. The outer tunics, which we call “red skin,” regularly shrivel
and decay in the earth, and thus they disappear.
The central (fans) or young tunics, when they turn into leaves, do the
work of an air-pump; they are the lungs by which the plant lives; they
dilate in heat and contract in cold. When dilated they take in the air,
with all with which it is impregnated, and they give it out again with
the regularity that an animal breathes through its lungs.
Plants do not like the shade of trees; they need open air and sunshine,
and they like places where they catch the dew and rain and mist; the
moisture thus obtained through their leaves is better for them than
water poured upon them from a watering-pot.
Planted in hot-houses or under glass they do without much water,
because the hot air produces vapour by the sun’s rays from above or
from the fire beneath, and it is necessary to introduce a little air in
order to let it evaporate (but the plants must not be chilled by cold
seizing them in the process). Hyacinths which are protected by planks
sometimes do better than those under glass.
The planks are lifted and the plants find themselves exposed to the
open air, this is only done when the air is not likely to injure them.
To be kept constantly under glass or in a room sometimes affects their
colour and shape. It also spoils their colour to be exposed to heavy
rain or a very hot sun, which exhausts them. The leaves (as the leaves
of a tree) turn on their pedicels one side to the earth, for one
surface of the leaf sucks in moisture and the other gives it out. What
they receive through the upper surface by day they give out through
their under surface at night by a process of evaporation.
When the bulbs are planted the leaves (or fans) are already pushing
forth a green shoot. The gardener does not feel particularly uneasy if
the frost touches the tip of the shoot, but they are very much afraid
of (the frost) its reaching the flower-buds within the shoot, for if
their tops are nipped by the frost, the hyacinths will be disfigured.
If any one or two of the leaf sheaths get yellow or diseased they can
be cut away without injuring the bud, and neither will the bulb itself
suffer, as in any case the leaves drop off in the end of the year.
It is evident now that Nature works in the bulb from the interior to
the exterior, and this principle must be well borne in mind by the
cultivator.
CHAPTER III.—YOUNG BULBS
Having thoroughly examined roots, leaves, and tunics, we now come to
the organs of reproduction, and as the young bulbs form them themselves
very oddly and irregularly at the base of the old bulb, it is very
difficult even for a connoisseur to judge whether any little bulbs are
coming, and still less can he foretell how many he may hope for.
Sometimes they are numerous, and on single hyacinths twenty-four have
been known to develop on one bulb, but on single hyacinths they develop
very irregularly, while on the double they are more regular in their
growth; growing from the centre; though, as the central stem with all
its leaves grows, the new little bulbs are pushed more and more to the
sides—sometimes they push through to the outside of the bulb, sometimes
between the tunics, wherever they can get air.
Each baby bulb contains the same number of (fans) leaves as the parent
shoot, and develops in the same way—only that the first flower of the
new bulb is very thin and small. The tunics partake of the same bulbous
substance which forms the base of the bulb until it grows to the height
(or point) when it begins to take the suberous quality which
distinguishes the leaves from the bulb substance, and so the tunics, as
far upwards as they partake of the bulb substance, possess the same
capacity of producing young bulbs, which grow from them in the same
manner as from the base.
Some gardeners, in order to multiply their bulbs more rapidly, perform
the following operation: with the point of a penknife they cut into the
base of the bulb (the point turned upwards and inwards), turning the
knife round inside the bulb, the base is cut out (with crown and
centre) in the shape of a cone—the upper portion forming a concave,
exactly fitting the convex of the base (which is the interior which has
been separated by the knife).
The separated base forms no stem the first year, and the inner tunic
leaves (fans) are little and poor, and seem hardly to have strength to
grow, but they form themselves into tunics quite well, and are grown
enough by the following year to cover the stem, which, however, is not
quite developed as it should be till the third year—then it is as good
as any other of its species. The inferior or lower part scarcely ever
produces young bulbs after it is cut from the rest.
The two parts of the bulb should be carefully put into very dry sand,
covering them about two inches—they must be left some little while
exposed to the sun, which would burn them if not well covered with
sand: they must then be put in a window or in some place where they are
well preserved from damp; they are thus left for four or five weeks—the
superior part turned top upwards—the under part anyhow, it is a matter
of indifference how it is placed. In four or five weeks’ time the upper
portion has developed such a number of young bulbs that they are
injuring one another.
The baby bulbs are by this time perfectly formed, and one can count
their leaves or tunic leaves (fans), six or more, and each possesses
its stem.
The upper part (of the bulb operated upon), consisting of tunics
without base or crown, which is thus able to produce so many young
bulbs, can also manage to nourish them during their early growth
(though without roots).
This operation will sometimes save a bulb when it is beginning to decay
at the base, and it will thus produce bulbs when the decayed part has
been cut away. The bulb called “l’Eveque” has a way of bringing forth
young bulbs like buds at the base of the flower-stalk—one or two young
bulbs will be found adhering to it an inch or so above ground. These
little bulbs are as well formed as if they had come from the base and
had been nurtured in the earth. Perfect bulbs can be raised from them
by cutting the stem an inch above and an inch below the part to which
the young bulbs are attached; they are then put by in earth, and
treated in the same way as those which had the _conic operation_
performed on them; and just as those were grown and nurtured, simply
fed by the tunics—so these obtain their sap for the first year entirely
at the expense of the stem, and without starting any roots on their own
account. Never more than two bulbs grow thus upon a stem, while very
often nearly thirty appear on the upper part of the bulb, which has
been separated from the lower part (cone shape). The bulbs grown on the
stem take a longer time in coming to perfection than those that start
from the base, as a rule in their first year they seem to reach to the
same stage as a three-year-old bulb which has been raised from seed—and
follow the same gradual course of development, not producing a perfect
stem in the beginning.
It is a well-known method with gardeners to _cut_ their bulbs in order
to give air and outlet to the young bulbs that are coming. They are
simply sliced across (not very deeply) underneath, at their base;
sometimes they are slit crosswise, good care being taken the knife does
not cut into the growing flower stem in the centre (the centre of the
cross-cuts meeting a little to one side to avoid the central stem). By
this means this year’s shoot is preserved, and when the bulb bursts
asunder (along the lines cut for it, through the strength of the young
bulb-shoots pushing their way through) a principal bulb forms itself in
the centre, which by the second year is as perfect as any.
There is no part of a bulb which can be pointed out as exclusively
serving for the production of young bulbs. They come sometimes from the
centre, sometimes from the stem—bursting open the bulb and becoming so
like it in form that gardeners have some difficulty in distinguishing
the parent bulb from the new. It seems inconceivable that Nature should
put such strength into such a delicate production as the young bulb;
when once it finds space to develop itself there is no part of the old
bulb it will not force to let it through. The angular form of the young
bulb comes from the kind of resistance it meets and moulded by the
space in which it is free to expand. If it grows on the outside of the
bulb, it is concave on the side which joins the round side of the bulb,
while on its outer side it is round.
After the first year the young bulb becomes its normal shape, like
those which are raised from seed. It is difficult to ascertain if a
bulb is going to produce young ones or not,—it is easy to be mistaken,
though the conic operation will show clearly in a few weeks if young
bulbs are going to develop. It seems scarcely possible that those which
develop more naturally can force their way through the tunics without
aid, and do their work in the space of one year.
It has been found that when young bulbs have not strength sufficient in
their first year to burst the tunics, their development is much
assisted by the bulb being cut. The different experiments which have
been made prove convincingly that a bulb can bear many amputations
safely, and if at any time a sickly bulb has to be cut, one may be
pretty certain to get young bulbs from it by taking care _to keep the
wound made by the cut quite dry_.
There are some bulbs, such as François Ist, which may exist years
without producing a single young bulb, while others produce at so great
a rate that one only wishes they would stop. This shows that young
bulbs are plentiful, and may grow in all parts of a bulb,—only that in
some they find more resistance than in others,—and the difficulty they
find in working their way through the harder sorts causes the slight
difference in the forms of the bulbs in the different species. Though
all look very much alike to the casual observer, there are nevertheless
differences between them. There are some famous growers, such as George
Voorhelm, who seldom makes a mistake though he owns 1200 sorts. Each
sort has its own regular and distinctive method of reproduction, and
peculiarities which mark one species never become accidental in
another; each kind keeps to its own manners and customs.
Nature being ever obedient to laws, certain knowledge of her ways is
the more easy to acquire—the law of species will be the same in a
thousand years as it is to-day. Culture has certainly improved species,
and finished what Nature could not by herself complete. Some accidents
have become thus a second nature, remaining permanent if another
accident does not again occur to disturb the existing order.
CHAPTER IV.—SEEDS
Although there is a way of propagating hyacinths by seed, like other
plants, yet it should be known to all that it is seldom that a double
hyacinth produces seed, and such a thing has not been known as a seed
(from either double or single hyacinth) ever producing a species at all
resembling the hyacinth from which the seed is taken. “La Perruque
quarrée,” a red hyacinth, has produced “La Comète”—a very fine sort,
and a splendid red, but it has no resemblance to “La Perruque quarrée,”
and yet they are about the nearest in likeness that have been produced.
There is no visible difference between the seeds of double and single
hyacinths. Gardeners are more hopeful of raising double flowers from
the seeds of single hyacinths than of raising double from the seeds of
double. They have not yet found any principle to go upon in the choice
of seeds, however many experiments have been made. Some have thought a
well-formed hyacinth in its seventh year, being then in its prime, is
more likely to produce double flowers from its seed than it would be if
ten or fifteen years older. It is supposed that the seed of a full
hyacinth, which has its petals redoubled to the centre of the flower,
possesses an advantage over others, or double may be raised from its
seed, but it very rarely produces seed at all; when it does, success is
still very uncertain. Some like to try semi-double; some follow one
method, some another, few obtain the same result twice over. Some
amateurs, once upon a time, longing to obtain a new sort of flower,
sowed the seeds of a single yellow hyacinth, very pale in colour, and
of quite a small and common sort; they were lucky enough to obtain
splendid flowers of a very good white, the centre a perfect yellow,
stems and blossoms all superb,—“Saturne,” “Heroine,” “Flavo Superbe.”
“Og Roi de Basan” also derives its origin from the stock raised from
this seed.
Countless experiments have been made, and all tend to show that flowers
produced from seed never resemble the flower from which the seed was
taken. As a rule they differ in every point, shape, colour, and height.
Nature insists so much on variety that even seeds taken from the same
seed-vessel do not produce flowers alike. Some may be red, others blue
or white, large or small, as the case may be, sometimes they are
fortunate enough to get several double varieties from the seed of the
single hyacinth. It must be confessed, added to other difficulties
there is this: it is four years before the seed produces its
flower—that is, in an ordinary way, for sometimes it is more advanced
by one or two years. As during the course of four years the bulbs are
taken up three times out of the ground, it may sometimes happen that
the experiment has failed through negligence, but there has never been
any doubt at all about the fact of a seed never producing the same kind
of hyacinth as the parent stock.
One should not cut the hyacinth stalk, or separate it from the bulb, if
seeds are to be taken from it, until the ovaries are yellow and
beginning to open and show their seeds, which should be already black.
Then they can be cut and put in a place where they are protected from
sun and rain, and when the ovaries are quite dry the seed can be taken
from them and very carefully kept (not wrapped up or covered) until the
time for sowing them, about the middle of October. Growers who have no
interest in preserving the seed believe it is a bad thing to exhaust
their bulbs by leaving the seed to ripen on the plant. The earth that
the seeds are thrown upon should be well prepared (I shall describe its
composition presently).
The seed is visible enough to be spread about without the necessity of
mixing it with sand, as is sometimes done with vegetable garden seeds.
They must not be sown too thick, and about an inch deep. When it is
beginning to turn cold they must be protected from the frost by a
covering of manure, leaves, or tan. The seed, which begins soon to
germinate, is very sensitive to heat and cold. The parts of the seed
are not unlike a fruit. It is first covered by a strong black skin, and
under this a fleshy substance. This contains an almond, within which is
enclosed the germ; this develops in the same manner as in the seeds of
all plants that are called by botanists “one lobed” or “monocotyledon.”
During growth this almond part of the seed detaches itself from its
wraps.
When the grain is put into the ground in the month of October it
swells, and the germ, piercing through the _pericarp_ or fleshy part of
the seed, begins to develop itself. The little leafy shoot which pushes
upward is the part that botanists call the _plumule_, and the part
which pushes from the central axis (or plantule) is called the radicle
or little root. During the first year the little root is always
tuberous or knotted. It does not yet draw sap from the earth. It is
generally agreed among botanists that the plumule and radicle (the
plant and little root) at this stage draw their nourishment from the
cotyledon or seed-lobe, to which they are still joined. This lobe goes
on nourishing the plant till the bulb has already taken form, and takes
in nourishment from the earth (through its base).
The thin round leaf-shoot which comes up remains _bent_ a whole year
before it has gained sufficient strength to rise straight. The first
year the root is only a thin thread; sometimes it grows very long and
is full of knots, then it is organically diseased, and the bulb will be
very weak and worthless. They often die when the root is thus deformed.
To make a well-formed bulb the root should have only one knot at the
place where it comes from the seed; upon this the bulb forms itself. At
first it is composed of a single tunic, and this tunic is joined and
completely closed on all sides.
At the end of one year (after sowing the seed), if the bulb were taken
up, one would find this tunic lined with two other tunics exactly like
it.
The bulbs being still very small, they exhaust the soil very little, so
that the first year growers do not take the trouble to take them up.
But an amateur, who raised a great many from seed, used to say he
thought taking them up every year certainly assisted their growth.
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.
Of the double species the first known was named “Marie,” this and the
two kinds that followed are now lost. “Le Roi de la grande Bretagne”
existed only seventy years—this was rare and much sought after, and the
price rose to many thousand florins. This bulb, imported to hot
climates, grew infinitely better than in Haarlem; for it soon died in
cold or damp spots. From this time great attention began to be paid to
the cultivation of hyacinths raised from seed.
The number of “Conquests” has now become immense, and many more grow
bulbs than in former days, and every grower makes his own catalogue, in
which his “Conquests” are known under names which are kept in all the
lists which are re-written every year. In this list there may be
flowers of different colour bearing the same name—such as “Gloria
Mundi,” which is classed with the blues; the same name re-occurs
classed with reds and whites. Frequently double-flowering bulbs of
different colour have the same name—so that it is as well, when
ordering a particular bulb, to specify and enter into details when
writing the order. Then mistakes will be prevented, which are as
distasteful to the grower as to the dissatisfied purchaser. Growers do
not all agree in classing their bulbs, some for example classing among
reds a hyacinth which another would call _white with red heart_, and
which a third might call pink and white, or flesh colour. Besides which
the exact shade or _nuance_ differs perhaps in every garden—and it is
not so easy to class hyacinths in a way to satisfy everyone, any more
than it is easy to produce a completely satisfactory Method of Botany.
Seasons are variable, and colours of flowers are much affected by
changes of weather. 1767 was a very disastrous season by reason of the
cold north wind which prevailed in the early part of the year. Red
hyacinths were infinitely poorer than the preceding year, which was a
particularly favourable one to bulb growers.
One must make allowances for seasons and accidents, and one ought not
to expect the bulbs sent off annually by the growers to be always
equally good, for in some years they are more successful than in
others—also the same bulb which flowers splendidly, as a rule, may take
it into its head to yield a very poor flower, though it may be planted
in the same soil—between two others which are doing their best; one can
see no cause why they should be so uncertain, except perhaps they pump
in sap more vigorously at one time than another. It can be accounted
for sometimes by the fact that the bulb itself is feeling disposed to
throw out young bulbs, and the sap is being drawn away from the
flower-stalk—or it may have suffered from a cold draught, when it was
lying on the shelf in the winter—or it may be it is feeling the damp.
CHAPTER V.—ORGANS OF REPRODUCTION
The various species of hyacinths, though apparently different and
distinct, are essentially alike. Bulbs of one sort differ very little
from those of another—the leaves are always alike, their stalks grow in
the same way—their blossoms, though infinitely varied, are arranged in
the same regular order—each connected with the stem by a little thread,
called the pedicel.[4] The double scarcely differs from the single,
except in the blossom. We have already followed the gradual course of
the growth of the bulb, and described its general composition. We will
now go back to the single hyacinth, for in explaining its work of
reproduction it is easier and more convenient to dissect than the
double flower.
[Footnote 4: The calyx or flower-cup, being coloured or petaloid in its
nature, is now called the corolla, but the old-fashioned word is here
used—the pedicel is the little stalk which attaches the flower to the
stem (or peduncle).]
[Illustration: A BOATLOAD OF FRAGRANCE]
The calyx or corolla forms at the base (through its shape) a chamber or
room in which the “ovary” is found, but detached from it. At the point
where the calyx is narrowed in at the entrance of the ovary chamber are
the stamens. The parts of the corolla (or divided sections which curl
back in the hyacinth) are called petals.
The stamens are attached to the interior of the calyx, and from the
base of the stamen to the pedicel (or little connecting stalk) runs a
fine fibre (which takes the place of the filament which is detached in
other flowers), and this is seen from the outside as a line of colour a
little darker than the rest of the flower.
The _ovary_ (in the chamber at the bottom of the calyx) is surmounted
by the pistil, the narrow body of the pistil is called the stylus, and
the head is the stigma.
The stamens of the hyacinth have no filaments, they are sessile within
the calyx, and the anthers are also attached at their base (though
there is the fine thread of darker colour to be seen running through
the calyx extending from the stamen to the pedicel).
The stamen is covered, when ripe, with a yellow dust called _pollen_,
this looks like little black grains when under a microscope—they are
little bags full of a kind of clear juice, these, when the stamens bend
over and shed (as pollen), are caught by the stigma at the head of the
pistil. This stigma, when seen under a microscope, is seen to be
composed of very fine valvular cells, which can hold the seminal
juice—the juice passes through the narrow channel of the stylus (or
body of the pistil) into the centre of the ovary, which has an aperture
so arranged as to let it in till it is full, when it closes again so
completely that the seminal juice is held within till the time comes
when the ovary is forced open by the ripening seed.
Before the flowers expand, and while they are still enveloped like a
wheat ear in leafy bandages, the ovary is already furnished with eggs;
but the seminal juice has not yet been deposited, the pistil not being
formed enough to open its cells, but even while the flower is still in
bud, the anthers let fall their pollen, and the pistil opens its cells,
and no one seems to know exactly when it happens that the pollen
explodes its little capsules of liquor or vapour or breath, which form
the seminal juice.
Saint-Simon has a theory that the bees flying to and fro constantly
over the flowers disturb the pollen, often carrying with them some of
the pollen (containing seminal juice) from one flower to another, where
it is deposited and received through the pistil into the ovary, and he
suggests that this is the cause why “Conquests” (_i.e._ hyacinths
raised from seed) never bear any resemblance to the flower their seed
is derived from. But this does not seem entirely to account for their
infinite variety. The invariability of this rule (that no hyacinth has
been known to produce its like by seed) seems to prove that variation
is not subject entirely to accidents of this kind, for surely sometimes
by accident there would come up the same flower as that from which the
seed was taken. Some growers may have taken seed from hyacinths grown
in hot-houses, where the flower has been protected from bees and
butterflies, and thus undisturbed the flower should have had seed which
reproduced its own kind—and why should this occur as an invariable rule
among hyacinths, when other flowers more frequently reproduce their own
kind than not, with them the _variation_ (when their seed has been
crossed by insects) is an _accident_.[5]
[Footnote 5: One feels disinclined to believe Saint-Simon is quite
accurate in his theory, that the variations in kind and colour of
hyacinths raised by seed are entirely due to the interference of
insects, for in the case of bees, it has been observed by certain men
of science that bees invariably prefer to visit flowers, not only of
one kind but of one colour during the course of one journey. That thus
a bee, beginning on a certain white flower, will choose out these white
flowers, leaving out every coloured one of that or of another species,
until, laden with honey, it returns to the hive. (It may be, bees lose
their heads when it is a question of hyacinths.)]
Curious experiments have been made with hyacinths.
Two different bulbs are to be chosen, blue and white, for instance. Cut
them perpendicularly down nearly through the middle, but being careful
to avoid cutting into their central shoots (_i.e._ the future
flower-stalk), then join together the two larger halves containing the
flower-shoot, thus making one bulb of them, so that the two flowers
should appear as arising from one bulb. Then, with a little moss wound
round the closed joins, the made-up bulb may be put into the earth like
any other. This usually results in producing two stems stuck together
back to back, with one skin around them both apparently; and on one
side comes out white flowers, on the other red or blue. Sometimes the
colours get mixed, the colour of one flower shaded with that of the
other, very rarely do the stems grow separate.
None of these experiments seem to explain how it is that a single
hyacinth can produce a double (by seed raising), though perhaps in ten
thousand seeds only two or three will come up double flowered; nor how
it is that the double can be redoubled (through seed), and that once
redoubled, the bulb is constant in giving off young bulbs with double
flowers, which never again degenerate into single; nor will a single,
in its offshoots, ever become a double hyacinth.
CHAPTER VI.—GENERAL
In the cultivation of hyacinths it is impossible to keep to any fixed
rule. Not only must every country and climate make its own, but every
hyacinth has its own ways and customs, its own special qualities and
characteristics. The most distinguished of their species exact a great
deal of attention, care, and management.
“François Ist” finds great difficulty in producing offshoots, and great
care has to be taken of the young bulb, but when once arrived at full
growth it is not as subject to disease of various kinds as are other
bulbs, and it does not die easily. It is the only bulb that still
continued to command a high price twenty-five years after its first
appearance; 100 florins were paid for a single bulb.
“Rien ne me Surpasse” is one of the most perfect blue, but it has such
wretched, weak, faded, even crumpled leaves, one would think the poor
thing was ill, but notwithstanding it produces a handsome,
healthy-looking flower.
“Passe non plus ultra” also looks very deplorable as to its leaves,
they seem hardly able to hold up, and remain lying flat upon the
ground, though quite green and well.
On the other hand, “Og Roi de Basan” shoots up its leaves so straight
and tall, and so large, that they seem quite out of proportion to
others, and the flower is an extraordinary height, overtopping all the
rest. The “Theatre-Italien” is a good red, but it grows very short, and
comes out before its leaves, so that its head may be nipped by the
frost.
“Marquise de Bonnac” is a very delicate colour, but it gives way in the
stem before the flower is fully out. The stems seems to fade and dry
up, and the flower falls on its face, and this is a very tiresome
habit. But it does not seem to damage the bulb, which flowers regularly
every year, notwithstanding these little accidents. A famous florist
told me it was because it had a bad circulation, and the sap hung on
the sides of the bulb, instead of running up the stalk. “Alcibiades”
and “Beau-regard” are also subject to such accidents; but they can be
prevented by planting the bulbs in November, that is, a month later
than other sorts. These kinds give off a number of young bulbs. The
bulbs which multiply very little and slowly have generally better
constitutions, and do not perish so easily. White, with red, purple, or
violet hearts are very subject to decay. “Gloria Florum Suprema”
perishes easily, and its offshoots perish with it, and this is peculiar
to this hyacinth, for most of those that perish easily also multiply
quickly. The kind that multiply fast are generally furnished with more
roots than the others.
Growers are mostly agreed that bulbs succeed infinitely better if taken
up from the ground every year (though it does seem contrary to nature).
It often happens that a bulb, if left in the ground, does admirably the
first and second years, and sometimes a third year it does well, but
after this period it usually catches some disease which turns into an
epidemic, killing all the bulbs in its neighbourhood; it is too late
then to find a remedy, and if lifted it will only rot on the shelves,
as it would have done in the earth. One knows insects are more numerous
one year than another, and thus they too may cause epidemics.
_Lifting the bulb_ is also a method of preserving the young bulb, which
otherwise would perish and decay from damp if left all the year
round—or, as they are sometimes a foot or more below ground, the effort
they make to force their shoots through that depth of earth is too much
for them.
It has been observed that when the sap does not circulate freely in the
bulb it is drawn up into the stem, and this is sometimes occasioned by
overheating the room or green-house,—then it grows tall and weakly, the
flowers are thin and deformed. The more the channels through which the
sap runs into the stem are dilated by too much heat, the tighter they
close again when the sap has finished its action, and the bulb becomes
thinner than it should be, and it is exhausted for the next year’s
growth and appears very languishing. One can see very well how this
comes to pass when it is remembered that the next year’s flower is
actually contained in the base of this year’s stem, therefore what
weakens one weakens the other. If the bulb is very deep in the earth
and the ground is hard, it cannot spread and enlarge itself with
comfort, so the health of the bulb requires it to be lifted every year.
Besides the necessity of _separating_ and preserving the young bulbs
which have to be replanted, there is yet another advantage to be gained
in lifting, for then there is an opportunity of taking away _decayed_
bulbs before the disease is able to spread further through contact with
others.
Having given some ideas on the cultivation of hyacinths in general,
perhaps it is as well to give in some detail an account of the
particular (or individual) care and attention bestowed upon their bulbs
by the Haarlem growers, and perhaps some hyacinth lovers may feel drawn
to imitate their spirit. Haply if they meet with the same difficulties
they may benefit by their experience and observations, and thus
obstacles may be surmounted that stand in the way of the development of
the ideal flower. These obstacles are often the result of soil,
climate, and inexperience.
As a general rule, hyacinths require a light soil, which easily lets
the water run through, but at the same time such a soil is soon washed
out, and it thus in a short time loses its good qualities and richness.
The sulphurous and oily qualities in the soil, that the hyacinth
delights abundantly to suck out of the earth, would be washed away or
evaporate speedily in such soil, even if the bulb itself did not
actually exhaust the spot where it has grown, this is the chief reason
why growers change their bulbs year by year. Damp is death to bulbs. In
a damp soil bulbs can never be preserved for any length of time. The
two general rules,—_Choice of light soil_, _Avoidance of damp_, are the
very foundations of bulb culture. The “couches” or “beds” made by
florists for their finest hyacinths are _remade_ every year, they are
also protected by caisses and layers of manure from the cold in winter,
and they are shaded from the hot sun in spring by canvas awnings. The
old soil (taken from the hyacinth beds) is carried to the garden
borders, where other flowers are grown, such as tulips, lilies,
Fritillaries, etc. The following year hyacinths are replaced in these
borders, and succeed therein marvellously,—thus year by year the same
earth bears alternately hyacinths and other flowers. If the reader’s
patience is not exhausted entirely I must ask him to bear out a little
longer, for I cannot without entering into very minute details give any
intelligible idea of the qualities necessary to provide the sap with
the kind of nourishment it seeks in the soil after the bulb is put into
the ground.
In Haarlem they take two years to prepare the compost, or composed
soil, which suits hyacinths so well. The first year a store of leaves
are gathered together and laid in considerable heaps, so large that
while they are rotting and becoming fit for use the sun cannot
penetrate, for if they were spread about the sun would cause the salts
and oils contained in the decayed leaves to evaporate, for this reason
the heaps are not to be in places where they are exposed to the sun,
nor in a damp place where water can sink in or stagnate. Growers do not
gather in all kinds of leaves, they have observed that oak, chestnut,
beech, and the leaves of the plane tree (which is now becoming common
in Holland), and others of like nature, do not dissolve easily into
earth; while the leaves of elm, wych-elm and birch, etc., are chosen
because their loose and fibrous tissue dissolve more readily into soil.
In the same manner they lay up a heap of cow-manure, which is left to
ferment _en masse_. Every country has its customs, and the Dutch
customs make a real difference in the quality of the materials
employed. All over Holland cows are kept in stalls from November to May
only, and during this time they do not eat grass. All the summer they
remain in the open, night and day, in the fields, so that manure is not
kept or taken up in the summer months. In the winter, when the cows are
fed on nothing but dry food, the manure is of quite another quality
from the summer manure, when cows have grass. This may be useful to
note for those who live in countries where manure is kept all the year
round. Cows are tethered in stalls in so narrow a compass that one can
hardly conceive how they can exist like this. They stand on a kind of
platform between two trenches, before and behind them; in the front
trench their food is put, which they can only get at by pushing their
heads between boards, which also prevent them from reaching too far and
pulling out the food, where it would be trampled under their feet. The
second trench, which is deeper, is behind them to receive the manure,
which is taken away and heaped up in a dry place, where it can easily
drain and where the rain can also run off, for no water or wet is
allowed to settle in or near the heap. As no straw whatever enters into
the composition of this manure, it is not at all like the kind
collected in other countries. I do not know if this is the reason, or
why it is that in England, especially round London, hyacinth growers
avoid using cow-manure as much as possible, the soil there being so
stiff and rich that it suits them better to make it a little poorer,
with an admixture of sand, than to heat it even with cow-manure, which
is the lightest kind of manure there is. First a heap of leaf-manure, a
second heap of cow-manure, and a third heap of sand is now made of sand
brought from the dunes, or it can be dug out of the very ground beneath
to the depth of some feet. Though all the soil about Haarlem and its
neighbourhood is mainly sand, especially near the dunes, where most of
the bulb fields are, yet they prefer to fetch sand from a distance
rather than take any from the surface of their own ground. This sand
should be as carefully examined as is the manure, so that, now that I
think of it, I must enter into further details, which will be thought
unnecessary by some people, but others will be glad to follow the
spirit of our inquiry.
The nature of the soil in Holland proves that the country has undergone
great geological changes, apart from the continual encroachments of the
sea.
It seems that at a very distant period, perhaps before or after the
Deluge, the country must have been covered over with forests, as were
Germany and Gaul in later times.
Either in the great Deluge of Sacred Writ, or during one of the partial
deluges that men of science speak of (but of which no one seems to have
any positive knowledge), these trees must have been thrown down and
laid on the ground in the direction of east to west, in such a manner
that where they fell they form strata (or layers), which time has
reduced to a thickness of six or eight inches at the most.
It may be that this layer of trees was at first exposed to the air, or
(as is more likely) was for some time covered by the sea, which,
depositing sand, pressed and consolidated it into the mass which we now
see, and which is found in all parts of Holland and Zealand, and is
known under the name of Darry or Derry.
It is very easy to perceive that it is old wood decayed into the earth
and reduced to the loose consistency of a sort of brown charred coal.
In some parts bits of the wood have been preserved whole and unchanged.
In the Bailey of Amstelveen, near Amsterdam, bits of wood are often
disinterred which has still “heart” enough to be used as ordinary wood.
Between Alphen and Leyden are to be found in several places whole tree
trunks, ten or twelve feet long. The derry matter is very substantial,
and it is very inflammable; it also holds water, so that it does not
run through from the surface of the peat to the water in the soil below
it. In Zealand, where it is easily taken up, it is forbidden under
penalty of death[6] to carry away the peat, because the water
underneath, which it retains, would do considerable damage in the
island.
[Footnote 6: Two hundred years ago.]
As we now know that piles and blocks of wood can last 2000 years in the
earth without rotting, so we may conclude that these trees (which now
compose the derry or turf) must have been much longer undergoing the
various operations of nature which resulted in producing this change.
No tree roots can penetrate this derry, and wherever sand does not
cover it over a certain depth, no vegetation can grow. Water falling on
the peat is held there, having no means of escape, and the sand on the
top is, therefore, always moist and fresh in proportion as it is near
the derry. If one digs a little hole in this ground, the water which
“fattens” the sand collects in a moment and fills up the hole which has
been made, and this becomes a running spring. These sort of springs
exist all over Holland, and they generally go by the name of
sand-wells. They are kept supplied only by rain, or by the water which
filters down through the sand from the dunes, and this often to a great
distance.
If bulb roots were to reach down to within a foot of this layer of peat
they would be spoilt, and the bulbs would perish. The depth of the
sand-layer over the peat is unequal and different in parts. By
measuring it they test the value of the ground, and not less is the
value measured by the length of time the sea has withdrawn from the
surface. There is no doubt this sand is from the sea-bottom, whether it
was the sea’s action that brought it, or whether it has been blown and
driven by the wind. The dunes have so often shifted that a knowledge of
the variations due to the shifting of the sand in the dunes is enough
to account for sand-layers, for it can be driven very far indeed by
wind from the sea.
A little while ago the village of Sheveling, near the Hague, was
surrounded by the dunes, which were at that time some distance from the
church, now it is much nearer,—the church cannot have moved. On the
same coast the mouth of the Rhine has been choked with sand, and the
sea now covers the castle of Bret, facing Catwick-sur-Mer. The castle
can still be seen at certain seasons at low tide. The sea has remade
other dunes, half a league farther inland. All along the coast near
Haarlem, beyond the canal which connects Haarlem with Leyden, the main
road cuts through these dunes in several places. In the island of
Walcheren, in Zealand, at very low tide can be seen vestiges of the
ancient town of Domburg, where they fish up statues of Nehellenia, a
heathen goddess, and also early Roman inscriptions.
In the present day dunes 100 feet high separate the new Domburg from
the one invaded by the sea, and the Zealanders, through their
marvellous and inventive industry, have succeeded not only in
fortifying themselves against encroachments from the sea, but have made
very extraordinary dykes, like the one at West Cappel, which you cannot
see when you are standing upon it, as it is nothing but a very long
sloping bank or glacis of timber-work, but the slope is so gradual that
the only resistance the water meets with is the long journey it has to
go to reach to the summit of the dyke, which, at its level, is much
higher than the sea.[7] But besides this they covered miles of the
sea-shore with platted straw matting, which they plat on the shore
itself,—this is to prevent the sea from carrying the sand away from its
own shores. These mats have to be renewed almost yearly.
[Footnote 7: Two hundred years ago.]
The sands of Haarlem are all more or less of this nature, and contain
saline and sulphurous particles of matter; the under stratum of peat or
derry prevent these from being absorbed into the ground. The sand also
contains particles which collect in some places and form a very thin
stratum of hard black matter, like that with which some minerals are
coated, and this is not less injurious to vegetation than is the derry.
The great success the Dutch growers have had in cultivating bulbs which
cannot be successfully propagated elsewhere is very much due to the
presence of this sand, deposited by the sea on a matter which,
fortunately, water cannot penetrate.
To return to the three heaps,—sand, cow-manure, and leaf-mould,—the
sand is placed in large heaps to “ripen,” rather perhaps to lose some
of the moisture. The growers from the three compose one general mass,
which they arrange in the following order: _First_, they make a layer
of sand; _second_, of manure; and _third_, of leaf-mould eight or ten
inches deep; they then begin again making more layers in the same
order, until their mass is six to seven feet high. The last layer is
manure, but as this is apt to harden in the sun, they throw a little
sand on the top. When this compound has fermented, six months,
sometimes rather longer, it is mixed up and another heap is made, which
is, however, again unmade and thoroughly remixed. When this soil has
remained a few weeks to settle, it is carried to the beds, where it is
laid to the depth of something like three feet.
George Voorhelm, in his book upon hyacinth culture, says that this
manure should be composed of _three-sixths_ of cow-manure, _two-sixths_
of sand, and _one-sixth_ of leaf-mould or of tan, and he for his part
preferred fresh manure to that which had been kept a year (to
ferment?). He especially warns amateurs against using horse, mule, pig,
or sheep manures; also he cautions them against using mud or cold earth
drawn from wells, or basins where the standing water and mud have to be
occasionally cleaned out; also against any powdered stuff or manures
picked up with dust from the street. He quotes persons who compose
their soil of tan (which has already been in use and nearly lost its
heat) with cow-manure and leaf-mould, using no sand at all.
When the soil is brought to the flower-beds they put the said quantity
beneath the bulbs, making the earth quite flat and even, without
pressure, and placing the bulbs upon the earth, _not embedding them_.
Then they are looked over to see that the bulbs are arranged in the
proper order or according to diagrams marked out for them. When their
places have been fixed, more soil is brought to put over them, great
care being taken to let the earth fall lightly on the bulbs, not to
disturb their position. The last addition of earth is generally not
more than three to four inches deep. In cases where the bulb has to be
brought forward in its growth, or else kept back—and is therefore put
at a greater or lesser depth in the earth—the gardener, in the latter
case, places more soil under the bulb to raise it higher, and this is a
much better method of putting in bulbs than making a hole with a
dibble, or, as some do, thrusting the bulb itself into the earth with
no tool and raking some earth over it, for this plan, besides hardening
the earth all round the bulb (the hole forming a sort of gutter which
holds water!) also runs a risk of bursting the bulb, which may be
already showing roots, or young bulbs hidden within might be knocked
off without its being perceived. The same method is used in planting
bulbs in garden borders. The surface of the earth is taken off and laid
on one side, the bulbs are placed in rows, and are very carefully
re-covered with the soil which was laid upon the side.
The frames used over show flower-beds should be raised not more than a
foot above the earth, and not less than half a foot. If too high, the
air dries the roots; if too low, the damp (from the vapour) may reach
them. The back of the frame should be buried rather deep, so that when
it is necessary to cover the flowers with planks, the frame will be
able to support them, or planks must be put at the back and sides,
fitting into each other, upon which those which form the roof over the
flowers can rest. The frames should be slanting from the back downwards
to the front, to let the rain run off and prevent it from dripping into
the bed. If the cold is very intense, the planks may be covered with
manure to prevent the frost from penetrating beneath. If the season is
a fair one, the flowers may be given a little air; but in cold seasons
it is a risky thing to do, because the early bedding plants are
exceedingly tender, and the heat of the manure, or whatever is provided
to shelter them from cold air, causes a damp vapour to rise inside the
frames, and as this cannot evaporate it falls back upon the flowers,
covering them with a little dew, which, if the cold air were admitted,
would freeze directly. It only takes an instant for young buds to
freeze, then the flowers come out, looking dried up, with burnt tips.
When the cold weather is past the manure is taken off, and air is
admitted to the beds for a few hours in the daytime, care being taken
to cover up again at nightfall. The manure which serves to protect the
bulbs from frost also brings forward young shoots, so that they begin
to show earlier in hot-beds than in garden borders. The slowest and
latest sorts begin the earliest to sprout. They are therefore purposely
not planted so deep in the ground, that they may get more quickly
warmed by sun and air, so it is quite natural that their buds should
pierce through earlier—but the difficulty the sap has in penetrating
and circulating through the very compact structure of these bulbs makes
it very difficult to get them to flower in good time with other sorts.
Growers have to use their skill not only in guarding flowers which are
beginning to show from frost, but also from strong winds, damp, and
everything that can do them injury. One year rats carried away and
stored by hundreds in their holes the bulbs in the gardens of Van
Zomped at Overween,—although they had a stream to cross to get at them.
Growers must be _au fait_ with every possible eventuality, and must
foresee and prevent every possible mischief. They must know exactly the
time by night or day when it is proper to cover or uncover their
flower-beds. Their chosen blooms are covered with tents of canvas,
beneath which they can conveniently walk.
Besides these tents, over the most delicately-complexioned flowers
little parasols are arranged. These are mounted on little rods, which
stick in the ground, and quite protect the flowers, which last several
days longer with growers who give them this protection, and keep their
colour better. When the flowers first begin to expand, our florists
(who work on the principle of never watering) protect them from rain as
carefully as they do auriculas. When they begin to make a show of
blossoms they powder the sand-beds with a light mould, in order to make
the colours look more brilliant against the dark brown background. They
tie the stalks to little wire rods, painted green, leaving the ties
loose, so that none of the blossoms are caught and broken when the
flower pushes up in its growth. The pedicel is very delicate before the
blossom is formed, so that the slightest thing can easily break it.
When the single hyacinths are in bloom the florists open their gardens
to the public. A wonderful sight presents itself on first entering the
gardens, vistas of alleys with flowers of every variety, and kind, and
colour, cut by borders and beds which contain each one kind of flower
only. Hyacinths are in the greatest number. Early tulips, narcissi,
anemones, and others are laid out in successive order. The effect is
surprising. Never, when they are once selected and placed in position,
does a grower ever touch his bulbs again, he dare not disturb them once
they are planted, but if a bulb dies or refuses to grow they may
possibly embed a flower in a pot in its place; it is even permitted to
put a flower like it in a glass vase close to the leaves of the lost
blossom, but they never attempt to take out a weak or unsuccessful bulb
in order to substitute another. The flowers should be arranged
according to gradation, that is, the tall specimens behind; the short
in front; the colours as varied and as brilliant as possible.
The beds have a much more brilliant effect if two flowers of the same
colour are put together, in pairs; some plant each kind thus, double,
throughout the bed. The chief thing in arranging flower-beds is to
manage that all the flowers should be out in full flower at the same
time. It is a very difficult art, but the Haarlem bulb growers are able
to accomplish it. Every bulb has its own particular habit of growth,
one will flower early and another late, there may be the difference of
a whole month between them.
[Illustration: A DUTCH GARDEN IN SPRING]
People come miles to see these gardens, which are in bloom all April
and part of May. Single hyacinths begin flowering towards the end of
March, and last in flower for about twenty days, if the season be
favourable. Single hyacinth beds are usually placed alternately with
double, and the effect is more brilliant. Single hyacinths grow more
thickly, there are sometimes fifty blossoms on one stalk, and very
often several stalks on each plant. The red-single are a more brilliant
red than are the red-double, and single blues have much the most
delicate shade of colour.
About the 20th of April the hyacinths begin to be at their best, the
25th and 26th are ordinarily the days when they are in perfection and
in their full glory. By the 4th or 5th of May they are going over, and
the later sorts are beginning.
In Haarlem they are too carefully attended to to suffer much from the
weather, their cultivators being very industrious, and watch over them,
arranging for the protection even of the most ordinary kinds, for none
are neglected.
When a new piece of land is taken for cultivation, they begin by
trenching it six feet deep, and if they come across a bed or layer of
derry, they do not fail to take it away. In gardens which have been a
long time under cultivation peat or derry is not found, for it is
injurious to vegetation. Pure sand is usually found to some depth, but
they try to dig down below the sand to the earth and dig up about a
foot of it to mix with the soil. The sand corrects the effect of the
cow-manure which is put in, a layer of seven or eight inches deep
(without straw), over the entire surface of the ground, which is then
worked in with a spade. They mix up the manure as much as possible, so
that when well worked in it is to be found to a depth of one foot below
the surface.
It is not a good thing to plant hyacinths the first year in the newly
manured soil; they usually leave an interval of one year before they
put in hyacinths again, and in the intermediate years they cultivate
tulips, jonquils, narcissi, lilies, crocuses, fritillaries, crown
imperials, martagon or mountain lilies, irises, and other tuberous
plants or bulbs which they keep in quantities; they take care to work
the ground well every year, this brings the earth which was below, at
the roots of the last year’s plants, to the surface.
The earth dug, trenched, and enriched (for it must be borne in mind it
is nearly entirely sand) remains for five or six years without need of
manure. After this space of time it has to be worked all over again,
dug as deeply as before and manured, if possible adding more pure sand,
which is found by digging a very deep way down. In winter the beds are
covered with tan or manure in proportion to the strength of the cold.
Growers like the frost to penetrate as far as within an inch of the
bulbs. If it goes farther, it freezes the cluster of buds; and if it
reaches the roots, the bulb is lost beyond redemption. But such a
misfortune seldom occurs, for growers know how to protect them by
increasing the thickness of manure or tan covering. Some heap up the
fallen snow over the beds, believing it is good for bulbs, as it is for
nearly all other plants, especially for corn and oats; while others
take away the snow rather than add to it. Each has good reasons, and
much depends on the time of year, for if it is late snow and the
hyacinths are beginning to put out leaves, a quantity of snow may be
hurtful and cause a fermentation of the sap, which may cause the bulb
to decay.
After the cold weather is over the hyacinth buds begin to pierce
through the manure, and then it can be taken off, and there is nothing
more to be done after that but just to pull up any weeds that make
their appearance. Growers either leave the flowers to fade or else cut
them off, they believe it makes no difference which they do. Some, when
the stalks are left uncut, strip off the blossoms with their ripening
seed-vessels, thinking it preserves the sap within the bulb; others cut
the leaves half-way down, for they grow very long and lengthy when the
flower is dead. Both these methods are clean contrary to the principles
of the art of cultivation. Still, stripping the blossoms does little
harm in comparison with the harm done by cutting the leaves, which have
a most important function to perform, for they now take on themselves
the work of the dried-up roots and feed the bulb, and they breathe in
through their leaves the particles of air most suited for the plant’s
nourishment. The leaves are then entirely maintaining the plant and
keeping the sap in circulation. When the fans or long leaves begin to
fade and dry, the bulb is then pulled up out of the earth—with the
hand, as much as possible, for fear the spade or fork should injure the
young offshoots. The leaves are then cut off altogether, and the bulb
is replaced in the earth _on its side_, being covered up again with an
inch or two of very light soil, such as we described—the bulbs are left
about a month or two in this state. When the time comes for them to be
finally taken up, a fine dry day is chosen. The bulbs are then left out
in the open air for a few hours. (If the sun is too hot, it will make
them “boil,” as the gardeners say, and the sun can kill them as surely
as the frost.) They are then placed on sieves, where they are lightly
shaken to separate from them the earth which sticks to them, the roots
are carefully removed—_carefully_, for the sake of the young bulbs (or
offshoots)—and put away on the bulb-house shelves.
All growers proceed very much in the same way, but those who do not
follow merely mechanically the trade methods, know that every bulb
likes a separate treatment, and they do not take up all the bulbs in
one bed on the same day—they leave the lazy ones, which are slow to
ripen, longer in the ground, and they don’t cut the leaves of the
quickly growing ones quite so soon. When taking up their bulbs, they
judge the quantity of sand to be left to cover them (in the drying
process), according to the need of each one. Experience having taught
that a slow bulb which takes long to develop gains warmth (and the
fermentation of the sap is hastened) by letting it “cook,” as they say,
in the sun. On the contrary, if it is a quickly ripening variety, they
keep it much less time in the oven (that is, under sand in the sun).
These have a little more sand over them, and are stored a little sooner
in the bulb house. One grower said he had for fourteen years planted a
François Ist and taken it out every year exactly in the same state as
he had put it in, it had not changed in form or size, nor had it given
a single offshoot. Another said he kept a Duc de Bourgogne thirty years
in the same way. G. Voorhelm said he had known a bulb look the same for
fifty years, but he did not mention whether it had ever given offshoots
or not.
In the end of June, or about that time, bulbs are put away into bulb
houses. The houses should be perfectly dry, inside and out, for damp is
very injurious—the houses should be thoroughly well ventilated, the
wind allowed to blow through. It is better if the bulb house be made to
open on three sides. When the bulbs have been sometime stored on the
shelves, they are cleaned; they then go through a medical examination,
and if there are any weak or sickly, they are separated from the
others. The evil, if it exists, can be detected by cutting the bulb at
the place where the fans or leaves come off. If the circle of tunics
looks quite healthy, with no stains or spots upon them, there is no
fear of disease—there is none if there is no outward mark of decay
anywhere to be seen;[8] but if there is the smallest spot or mark, the
knife must cut down to the root of the evil. Amputation does not kill
the bulb, and it is the surest remedy. As some of these diseases are
contagious, they can be communicated to others even in the ground,
where they are not so closely packed as they are upon the shelves,
therefore it is necessary to take care to examine them thoroughly in
order to prevent contagion. The nature of these diseases and their
cause is not yet known. The best remedy is amputation of the diseased
parts, and many growers remove everything that has the least appearance
of decay. The great art (and experience alone can teach this) is to
know how to dry the cut wound without exhausting the sap in the bulb,
and to know just the time to put it back in earth,—the earlier it is
done and the more carefully the operation is performed the more likely
the bulb will be saved. The most common disease is an outlet of sap
between the tunics. Another is produced by small green-flies, which are
probably deposited as eggs. Green-fly and centipedes are the most
commonly to be seen. Bulbs left for a long time in the same place are
sure to contract diseases—this is one of the chief reasons why growers
are for ever changing them (even the common sorts), and are always
renewing the soil or putting the flowers in different places
alternately with others. When the growers are ready to replant their
bulbs, they clean them again, taking away the outer red skin or tunics,
which are now dried up, and keeping those adhering to the bulb, for it
would be harmful to a degree to take them away. They put aside the
young bulbs which are strong enough to be separated from the parent
bulb. The method of planting again has been described. I must add that
show-beds should be chosen in sunny spots. Hyacinths cannot bear to be
in the shade, and they must not be put under trees; but as they also
suffer from wind, it is a good thing to have trees not far off to break
the wind.
[Footnote 8: Except new disease.]
In conclusion, it would be a good thing if amateurs were not quite so
prodigal with their bulbs. They grow them in pots or in glass during
the winter, and it is usually their custom, when the flowers are dead,
to throw the bulbs away, supposing them to be good for nothing when
they have blossomed once. Instead of that, they should be left in the
glass jar or flower-pot till the leaves are likewise dead, then they
can be put for half a day in moderately hot sun to dry, and afterwards
placed in earth on their sides, as is done with other bulbs, covering
them lightly with sandy earth, and taking them up in the same way; when
in the autumn they are planted there will be no difference between them
and the other bulbs. If they are round and full of sap when they are
taken up, they can be used again in glass or pots in the house a second
year, if not, it is better to leave them in the open ground. But as it
is sometimes frosty weather when the bulbs are taken from the jars, it
is better to put them away at once in the green-house, covered with a
little sand, and wait till fine weather comes to put them outside for a
month or five weeks in the earth, preparatory to taking them to the
bulb-house shelves—_to plant before the rest_.
Hyacinths can be also grown in pots filled with moss, well pressed down
and kept sufficiently moist. If grown in water, rain-water is best.
Bulbs increase so rapidly that a grower who takes a little trouble to
cultivate, let us say about 300, will find himself in a few years
possessor of several thousand, which he does not care to keep. He will
also have the satisfaction of making Conquests with seeds he has
himself sown, and by exchanging these seedlings he can procure for
himself rare and costly kinds, which he cannot buy; he is thus able to
amuse himself with a collection which affords him much pleasure, and he
is also able to bestow some upon his friends. He may never have been in
the neighbourhood of Haarlem, he may never have learnt so many details
as are here put forth, in the hope that they may prove useful to many a
lover of flowers.
George Voorhelm, in the preface to his treatise on hyacinth culture,
encourages men of other nations to cultivate the hyacinth, and to sow
seeds, and, in his opinion, it would be better that the Dutch should
meet with rivals of other nationalities, for if all produced good
flowers, they would be able to supply each other reciprocally. He
thinks it a pity no other nation should have attempted to second the
Dutch in a work which reveals so wonderfully the many mysteries of
nature as that of the culture of the hyacinth.
Maximilien Henri, Marquis de Saint-Simon, wrote _Des Jacinthes, de leur
anatomic, reproduction, et culture_; also _Histoire de la guerre des
Alpes, ou Campagne de 1744_; _Histoire de la guerre des Bataves et des
Romains_.
Saint-Simon, born 1720; died 1799 at Utrecht. This Marquis de
Saint-Simon was uncle to Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of
the sect called Saint-Simoniennes. I think the Marquis was nephew of
the Duc de Saint-Simon, author of the _Mémoires of Louis XIV_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
THE TULIP TRADE
From De Koning’s _History of Haarlem_ (1635)
Many, no doubt, have heard of the extraordinary mania for tulips in
Holland in the seventeenth century. Dutchmen of all classes, highest to
lowest, forsook their ordinary occupations and business, in order to
engage in the tulip trade.
It is said the mania began first in France in the year 1635, and thence
spread to the Netherlands. Enormous prices were paid, and even houses
and land given in exchange for one bulb.
In Haarlem there stands a house, at one time in possession of the Widow
de Lange and Van Ek—it is numbered W. 3, No. 575. It used to be two
separate buildings, and one of them was known as the Tulip House,
because it was sold for one single tulip. When the last alterations
were made to this house in 1858 there was still to be seen a stone set
in the gable, upon which was carved a tulip, and below the following
inscription:—
1637.
This stone was kept as a remembrance of the famous tulip trade
of the year 1637, “when one fool hatched from another, the
people were rich without substance, and wise without knowledge.”
Since that famous year, according to tradition, the road that led to
the country beyond the Groot Poort and to the surrounding
neighbourhood, where most of the best Haarlemers grew tulips, was
called, in remembrance of all the money lost, “The moneyless path.” The
rage for tulips became intense, and every one was caught by the craze,
and positively some were driven mad by it. Though a few made a great
deal of money, the majority of the new bulb growers and buyers lost
everything they possessed! There is a saying in Dutch, “It is not good
to come to black seed, for then comes poverty.” (Canaries are fond of
eating their white seed first, and then have nothing left but the
black.)
Whoever had a plot of ground planted tulips therein. Rich and poor
alike—house-painters, cobblers, tailors, weavers; in a word, nearly
everyone either grew or speculated in tulips—some sold all their tools
and instruments to buy bulbs. And indeed they might well look forward
to great profits, seeing that the bulbs, which in the beginning cost
but a few guldens, had now risen to hundreds and thousands. The most
coveted and rare kinds it had now become impossible to buy. For one
single bulb 12 acres of land in the Schermer were offered. The _Semper
Augustus_ must have been the rarest and most costly of any, the
fabulous price of 13,000 florins was once paid for it, and soon after
three of these bulbs were again sold for 30,000 florins.
The price of land and the hiring of fields to raise the bulbs in grew
very high. A gentleman was offered 50,000 florins a year for his field
for seven years, in addition to a share in the profits. Such was the
rage for buying and selling, that most of the inns and taverns in the
town were turned into places of Exchange and Mart, where bulbs were
bought and sold even before they could be taken out of the ground. A
book-keeper was employed, who kept a book of all the transactions and
of the profits made, which seemed in some cases very large.
Many men, unused to the possession of so much money, became so very
extravagant that they spent more than their income, and began to live
at such a high rate of expenditure, buying carriages and horses, and
living in such a fashion that only men who possessed untold wealth and
capital could afford to do it.
What was foreseen by more wise and more thoughtful people came to pass.
Everyone having now become bulb-grower, there came to be so many tulips
in the market that prices suddenly dropped, and many buyers refused to
take the bulbs at the price agreed upon, and many quarrels and disputes
arose over the matter. Finally, the States-General of Holland appointed
by decree that, from the 27th of April 1636, tulip-sellers had the
right to force buyers to buy at a price agreed upon (a standard
price?). So this decree stopped very high speculations, and a _Semper
Augustus_, for example, for which previously several thousand florins
had been paid, now fetched only 50 florins. There came a reaction, and
a great number of people were ruined.
In this way, says De Koning, began and ended a trade or commerce in
bulbs, which in nearly all the towns in Holland, but especially in
Haarlem, Leyden, Amsterdam, Alkmaar, Hoorn, and Enkhuizen, was kept up
with such energy that, alone in Haarlem, 10,000,000 florins for tulip
bulbs was paid and received, and the States-General of Holland were
even weighing the advisability of taxing the industry which brought so
much luxury. The little gardens near and in and about Haarlem had both
wide and narrow “moneyless paths,” all of which date from the time of
the tulip mania in the seventeenth century, and remain as witnesses of
the folly of our forefathers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
THE HYACINTH TRADE
From De Koning’s _Tafereel der Stad Haarlem_ (1808)
De Koning gives us an account of the hyacinth trade which began in
1730, and which continues to the present day. It was not so astonishing
as the tulip trade, and though the price of the hyacinth did not rise
as high as that of tulips, yet fancy prices were paid for some:—
Passe non plus ultra fetched 1850 florins
Gloria Mundi eenjong „ 650 „
Tempel Salomons „ 450 „
Praal Sieraad „ 400 „
From these figures one can see that the price of a favourite hyacinth
could not be compared to the price paid for a tulip bulb, but to this
day hyacinth culture is a trade by which people can really live
profitably (this was 1808). Not only at Amsterdam, where there are many
fields of hyacinths, but in many other Dutch towns, whence the bulbs
are sent to all countries. In Haarlem many of the bulb growers living
outside the Groot and Kleine Hout Poort had to send away such
quantities to foreign countries that the spaces near their houses
became too small to plant them out, so they were forced to rent more
ground to make new flower-fields, as their trade was increasing so
rapidly. These flower-fields, so neatly and cleanly kept, made very
beautiful surroundings to our town. When the hyacinths are in full
flower they are, with their different colours, row upon row, a very
beautiful sight, and many people are thus attracted to visit our
country. For bulb growers themselves it is a pleasant time; they all
meet and talk over the new sorts, and discuss their culture with no
small degree of excitement; they collect under the shelters erected
over the best sorts, and there stand smoking their pipes and relating
to each other their various experiences and the experiments they have
tried. Prices are no longer so high as in 1730. We have known, even in
our own day, the “Ophir,” now become so common that it has scarce any
value at all, sold for 3600 guldens, which shows what people are
willing to pay for a rare flower.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX
Achimenes, 113
Aconite, Winter, 31, 43
efficacy against poison, 43
Aconites, 105
Alkmaar, 86, 109, 170
Alliums, 45
Alphen, 154
Amaryllis, 113
Amstelveen, 154
Amsterdam, 4, 5, 6, 170
Great Canal of, 3
_Anemone coronaria_, 68, 71
Anemones, 23, 70
legendary origin of, 70
Star, 70
April in the bulb gardens, 9, 78, 83, 161
Arums, 113
Barns, bulb, 5, 11, 52, 104-106, 111-113, 164
orderliness of, 105
protection from mice and fire, 111
protection from frost, 112
Begonias, 73, 113
protection against frost, 74, 112
growing from seed, 74
Bicycles in the bulb gardens, 11
Bulb cleaning, 106, 107, 110
Busbecq, 98, 100
_Bride, The_, 15
Calochortus, 17, 113
Cannas, 113
Catalogues, 15, 116, 117
Cleanliness, 5, 107
Clusius, 59, 63, 71, 75, 76
Colchicums, 34
Collectors, bulb, 44, 113
“Conquests,” 141 _et seq._, 146, 166
Co-operation among bulb growers, 123
Crinums, 113
_Crocus sativus_, 34
Crocuses, 32-39, 113, 161
ancestry of, 33, 35
legends connected with, 35, 36
saffron, 34-39
uses of, 36, 37
Culpeper, 38, 39
Daffodils, 74-82
_Gerrard’s_, 76
_Great Rose_, 76
_Parkinson’s_, 76
_Strange Sea_, 76
_White Sea Bastard_, 76
_Wilmer’s double_, 76
Dahlias, protection from frost, 112
Darry (or Derry), 153, 161
De Koning’s _History of Haarlem_, 168
De Koning’s _Tafereel der Stad Haarlem_, 171
Derry (or Darry), 153, 161
Enkhuizen, 170
_Eranthis hyemalis_, 43
“Fair Maids of February,” the, 40
“Fleur-de-lys,” the, 60
“Flower-de-luce,” the, 60
Flowerdeluce, Great Turkey, 65
Fritillarias, 71-73, 161
_Aurea_, 73
_Crown Imperial_, 71, 161
_Recurva_, 73
_Snake’s-head_, 73
Galen, 59
Gerard, 16, 33, 38, 39
Gesner, Conrad, 99, 100
Gladioli, 10, 15, 16, 115
ancestry of, 33
protection from frost, 112
Glove-gardeners, 89
Gloxinias, 113
Great Turkey Flowerdeluce, 65, 67
Haarlem, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 19, 20, 33, 50, 64, 83, 91, 92, 109, 110,
121-167, 168-172
Hakluyt quoted, 34
Hedges, 9, 17
Hepaticas, 70
Hille, 33
Hillegom, 44
Hoorn, 170
Houses in Holland, 9, 25
Hyacinths, 17-19, 47-59, 91, 113
_Alcibiades_, 149
_Beau-regard_, 149
bees and, Saint-Simon’s theory, 146
bulbs, impossibility of reserving for second year, 128
cleaning the bulbs, 164
culture at Haarlem in the eighteenth century, 121-167
cutting the, 18, 19, 57
disease in, 56, 127, 134, 164
experiments with, 147
_Flavo superbe_, 137
_François Ist_, 126, 136, 148
_Gloria Florum Suprema_, 125, 149
_Gloria Mundi_, 126, 143, 171
grape, 58
_Heroine_, 137
high prices paid for, 142
_Jacques_, 50
_La Comète_, 137
_La Perruque_, 137
_Le Comte de Provence_, 126
legends connected with, 47, 48, 124
_Le Roi de la Grande Bretagne_, 143
lifting the bulbs, 149
manuring the ground, 91
_Marie_, 143
_Marquise de Bonnac_, 148
methods of producing bulbs, 51
_Mine d’Or_, 126
_Og Roi de Basan_, 126, 137, 148
_Ophir_, 172
_Orientalis_, 123
organs of reproduction, 132, 144 _et seq._
origin of, 49, 123
_Passe non plus ultra_, 148, 171
_Praal Sieraad_, 171
preparation of soil, 151, 156 _et seq._
propagation of, 126, 132, 136 _et seq._
protection of bulbs, 56, 131, 158, 162
_Rex Rubrorum_, 126
_Rien ne me Surpasse_, 148
_Saturne_, 137
_Sceptre of David_, 121
selection and cultivation, 50
sowing seed, 138 _et seq._
_Tempel Salomons_, 171
_Theatre-Italien_, 148
the four classes of, 125
the right soil for, 121, 149
use of cow manure, 152, 157
use of frames, 158
use of tents, 159
wild, 124
wood, 48, 58
Hyacinthus, 47-49, 124
_candicans_, 58
_orientalis_, 49, 58
Hymerocallis, protection from frost, 112
“Iohnquills,” 75, 161
_Iris anglica_, 62
_Bakeriana_, 64
_hispanica_, 14
_histroides_, 64
_reticulata_, 64
_susiana_, 17, 65, 66, 67
_xiphion_, 60
Irises, 13, 17, 47, 48, 49, 60-67, 161
legends connected with, 48
new varieties from seed, 62
purple, 15
remedial uses of, 60
Spanish, 60, 63
_Ixia viridiflora_, 16
Ixias, green, 16
Jonquils, 75, 161
July in the bulb gardens, 78
June in the bulb gardens, 10, 19-24
Kniphofias, 115
Land, preparation of new, 161
value of, 13, 33, 44, 108
_Language of Flowers_, the, 38, 69, 97
Leyden, 64, 110, 154, 170
Lilies, 161
Torch, 114
Lily tribe, the, 10
Manure, the use of, 40, 56, 91, 152, 157
March in the bulb gardens, 64, 78
May in the bulb gardens, 9, 78, 161
“Mevrouw,” 8, 10, 17
Narcissi, 74-82, 161
_Barri_, 78
_Emperor_, 78
_Empress_, 78
_Golden Spur_, 78
_Grandee_, 78
_Henry Irving_, 78
legends connected with, 79-81
_Poeticus_, 78, 79
_polyanthus_, 77-79
protection from cold, 77
Red, 77
_Sir Watkin_, 88
_Van-Sion_, 75
_Will Scarlet_, 77
Narcissus, 79, 80
_Clusii_, 75
_maximus_, 75
_Tazetta_, 78
Neatness on the farms, 5, 107
Onions, 45
Orderliness, 5, 105, 112
Over-covering the bulbs, danger of, 31
Overween, 159
Parasites, 31
Parkinson, 16, 33, 41, 45, 49, 58, 59, 76, 77, 87
quoted, 16, 50, 65, 71, 82, 93, 95
Pollarding, 17
Ranunculus, 10, 23, 68-70
_asiaticus_, 68
Roads, state of the, 12, 13
Robinio of Paris, 33
Robinson, 94, 96
Rubbish-heaps, absence of, 5
Saffron growing, 34
Saint-Simon, 121, 122, 126, 128, 146, 147, 167
Sand, 5
_Scilla alba_, 45, 59
medical uses, 59
multiplication of, 43
origin of, 43
_rubra_, 59
_sibirica_, 31, 43-45
Scott, Reginald, quoted, 45
Screens, to protect the farms, 17
Sheveling, 155
Sidney, Sir Philip, 99, 100
Snowdrops, 39-43, 105, 113
legends connected with, 40
liking for neglected soil, 39-40
multiplication of, 41
Soil, 5, 40, 51, 57, 91, 108, 121, 149, 151, 153 _et seq._
_Solfatare_, the, 14
“Squills,” 59
Stoves, 29
Swertius, 142
Tigridias, 113
Tradecant, 76
Tricycles in the bulb gardens, 11
“Trompetts,” 75
Tuberoses, 113
_Tulipa Gesneriana_, 96
_Gesneriana spathulata_, 98
_kaufmanniana_, 92
_turcica_, 95
Tulips, 83-103, 113, 161
_Bizarres_, 94
_Bybloomens_, 94
_Californian_, 17
_Chimney Sweep_, 89
Darwin, 100
disease in, 92
_Dora_, 85
_Duc van Tholl_, 91, 96, 102
feathered, 94
“Flamed,” 94
gambling in, 169
_Gesneriana spathulata_, 85
high prices paid for, 84, 85, 86
_Louis the XVI._, 84
manuring the ground, 91
new varieties from seed, 92
origin of, 96-100
_Painted Lady_, 89
_Parrot_, 95
protection from mice and other vermin, 90
protection of bulbs by straw, 91
_Rose_, 94
_Semper Augustus_, 84, 169, 170
Seventeenth-century mania for, 168 _et seq._
storing the bulbs in the barns, 106
the “breaking” of seedlings, 93
_The Citadel of Antwerp_, 85
variegated, 84
wild, 100
_Yellow Fool’s Coat_, 95
Vallotas, 115
Van Zomped, 159
Vegetables, 9, 91, 110
“Venice of the North,” the, 5
Voorhelm, George, 136, 142, 157, 167
Voorhelm, Pierre, 142
Wages, 106
Walcheren, 155
West Cappel, 155
Women, employment of, 106, 110
Ymuenden, 3
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
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Transcriber’s note:
Page 39, ‘epedemcal’ changed to ‘epidemical,’ “thing in epidemical
diseases”
Page 106, comma changed to full stop, “store, dangling. And beside them”
Page 146, ‘hothouses’ changed to ‘hot-houses,’ “hyacinths grown in
hot-houses,”
Page 149, ‘they’ changed to ‘the,’ “the effort they make to force”
Page 157, ‘two-thirds’ changed to ‘two-sixths,’ “three-sixths of
cow-manure, two-sixths of sand, and one-sixth of leaf-mould”
Page 157, ‘Alknaar’ changed to ‘Alkmaar,’ “Leyden, Amsterdam, Alkmaar,”
Page 174, comma struck following ‘25,’ “Houses in Holland, 9, 25”
Page 176, sub-entries for ‘Scilla alba’ entry re-ordered alphabetically
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Dutch Bulbs and Gardens" ***
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