Flowers And Flower-Gardens Part 19

There is a story about the origin of attar of Roses. The Princess Nourmahal caused a large tank, on which she used to be rowed about with the great Mogul, to be filled with rose-water. The heat of the sun separating the water from the essential oil of the rose, the latter was observed to be floating on the surface. The discovery was immediately turned to good account. At Ghazeepoor, the _essence_, _atta_ or _uttar_ or _otto_, or whatever it should be called, is obtained with great simplicity and ease. After the rose water is prepared it is put into large open vessels which are left out at night. Early in the morning the oil that floats upon the surface is skimmed off, or sucked up with fine dry cotton wool, put into bottles, and carefully sealed. Bishop Heber says that to produce one rupee's weight of atta 200,000 well grown roses are required, and that a rupee's weight sells from 80 to 100 rupees. The atta sold in Calcutta is commonly adulterated with the oil of sandal wood.

LINNAEA BOREALIS

The LINNAEA BOREALIS, or two horned Linnaea, though a simple Lapland flower, is interesting to all botanists from its a.s.sociation with the name of the Swedish Sage. It has pretty little bells and is very fragrant. It is a wild, un.o.btrusive plant and is very averse to the trim lawn and the gay flower-border. This little woodland beauty pines away under too much notice. She prefers neglect, and would rather waste her sweetness on the desert air, than be introduced into the fas.h.i.+onable lists of Florist's flowers. She shrinks from exposure to the sun. A gentleman after walking with Linnaeus on the sh.o.r.es of the lake near Charlottendal on a lovely evening, writes thus "I gathered a small flower and asked if it was the _Linnaea borealis_. 'Nay,' said the philosopher, 'she lives not here, but in the middle of our largest woods. She clings with her little arms to the moss, and seems to resist very gently if you force her from it. She has a complexion like a milkmaid, and ah! she is very, very sweet and agreeable!"

THE FORGET-ME-NOT

The dear little FORGET-ME-NOT, (_myosotis pal.u.s.tris_)[077] with its eye of blue, is said to have derived its touching appellation from a sentimental German story. Two lovers were walking on the bank of a rapid stream. The lady beheld the flower growing on a little island, and expressed a pa.s.sionate desire to possess it. He gallantly plunged into the stream and obtained the flower, but exhausted by the force of the tide, he had only sufficient strength left as he neared the sh.o.r.e to fling the flower at the fair one's feet, and exclaim "_Forget-me-not!_"

(_Vergiss-mein-nicht_.) He was then carried away by the stream, out of her sight for ever.

THE PERIWINKLE.

The PERIWINKLE (_vinca_ or _pervinca_) has had its due share of poetical distinction. In France the common people call it the Witch's violet. It seems to have suggested to Wordsworth an idea of the consciousness of flowers.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The Periwinkle trailed its wreaths, _And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes._

Mr. J.L. Merritt, has some complimentary lines on this flower.

The Periwinkle with its fan-like leaves All nicely levelled, is a lovely flower Whose dark wreath, myrtle like, young Flora weaves; There's none more rare Nor aught more meet to deck a fairy's bower Or grace her hair.

The little blue Periwinkle is rendered especially interesting to the admirers of the genius of Rousseau by an anecdote that records his emotion on meeting it in one of his botanical excursions. He had seen it thirty years before in company with Madame de Warens. On meeting its sweet face again, after so long and eventful an interim, he fell upon his knees, crying out--_Ah! voila de la pervanche!_ "It struck him,"

says Hazlitt, "as the same little identical flower that he remembered so well; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his memory."

The Periwinkle was once supposed to be a cure for many diseases. Lord Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by man and wife together would revive between them a lost affection.

THE BASIL.

Sweet marjoram, with her like, _sweet basil_, rare for smell.

_Drayton._

The BASIL is a plant rendered poetical by the genius which has handled it. Boccaccio and Keats have made the name of the _sweet basil_ sound pleasantly in the ears of many people who know nothing of botany. A species of this plant (known in Europe under the botanical name of _Ocymum villosum_, and in India as the _Toolsee_) is held sacred by the Hindus. Toolsee was a disciple of Vishnu. Desiring to be his wife she excited the jealousy of Lukshmee by whom she was transformed into the herb named after her.[078]

THE TULIP.

Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked.

_Southey_.

The TULIP (_tulipa_) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in Syria.

The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban.

What crouds the rich Divan to-day With turbaned heads, of every hue Bowing before that veiled and awful face Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes, Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs?

_Moore_.

The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so great an excess in Holland.

With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart, At a vast price, with one loved root to part.

_Crabbe_.

About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip (the _Semper Augustus_) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of 5,000 were made for a first-cla.s.s tulip when the mania was at its height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is unique!"

A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a thousand Royal feasts.[079]

The tulip mania never leached so extravagant a height in England as in Holland, but our country did not quite escape the contagion, and even so late as the year 1836 at the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon, seventy two pounds were given for a single bulb of the _f.a.n.n.y Kemble_; and a Florist in Chelsea in the same year, priced a bulb in his catalogue at 200 guineas.

The Tulip is not endeared to us by many poetical a.s.sociations. We have read, however, one pretty and romantic tale about it. A poor old woman who lived amongst the wild hills of Dartmoor, in Devons.h.i.+re, possessed a beautiful bed of Tulips, the pride of her small garden. One fine moonlight night her attention was arrested by the sweet music which seemed to issue from a thousand Liliputian choristers. She found that the sounds proceeded from her many colored bells of Tulips. After watching the flowers intently she perceived that they were not swayed to and fro by the wind, but by innumerable little beings that were climbing on the stems and leaves. They were pixies. Each held in its arms an elfin baby tinier than itself. She saw the babies laid in the bells of the plant, which were thus used as cradles, and the music was formed of many lullabies. When the babies were asleep the pixies or fairies left them, and gamboled on the neighbouring sward on which the old lady discovered the day after, several new green rings,--a certain evidence that her fancy had not deceived her! At earliest dawn the fairies had returned to the tulips and taken away their little ones. The good old woman never permitted her tulip bed to be disturbed. She regarded it as holy ground. But when she died, some Utilitarian gardener turned it into a parsley bed! The parsley never flourished. The ground was now cursed.

In grat.i.tude to the memory of the benevolent dame who had watched and protected the floral nursery, every month, on the night before the full moon, the fairies scattered flowers on her grave, and raised a sweet musical dirge--heard only by poetic ears--or by maids and children who

Hold each strange tale devoutly true.

For as the poet says:

What though no credit doubting wits may give, The fair and innocent shall still believe.

Men of genius are often as trustful as maids and children. Collins, himself a lover of the wonderful, thus speaks of Ta.s.so:--

Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders that he sung.

All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative.

And visions as poetic eyes avow Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.

The Hindoos believe that the Peepul tree of which the foliage trembles like that of the aspen, has a spirit in every leaf.

"Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" said Blake, the artist.

"Never Sir." "_I_ have," continued that eccentric genius, "One night I was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness amongst the branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came: at last I perceived _the broad leaf of a flower move_, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures the size and color of green and gray gra.s.shoppers, _bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf_, which they buried with song, and then disappeared."

THE PINK.

The PINK (_dianthus_) is a very elegant flower. I have but a short story about it. The young Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis the Fifteenth, was brought up in the midst of flatterers as fulsome as those rebuked by Canute. The youthful prince was fond of cultivating pinks, and one of his courtiers, by subst.i.tuting a floral changeling, persuaded him that one of those pinks planted by the royal hand had sprung up into bloom in a single night! One night, being unable to sleep, he wished to rise, but was told that it was midnight; he replied "_Well then, I desire it to be morning_."

The pink is one of the commonest of the flowers in English gardens. It is a great favorite all over Europe. The botanists have enumerated about 400 varieties of it.

THE PANSY OR HEARTS-EASE.

The PANSY (_viola tricolor_) commonly called _Hearts-ease_, or _Love-in-idleness_, or _Herb-Trinity_ (_Flos Trinitarium_), or _Three-faces-under-a-hood_, or _Kit-run-about_, is one of the richest and loveliest of flowers.

The late Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, was so fond of this flower that she thought she could never have enough of it. Besides round beds of it she used it as an edging to all the flower borders in her garden.

She liked to plant a favorite flower in large ma.s.ses of beauty. But such beauty must soon fatigue the eye with its sameness. A round bed of one sort of flowers only is like a nosegay composed of one sort of flowers or of flowers of the same hue. She was also particularly fond of evergreens because they gave her garden a pleasant aspect even in the winter.

"Do you hear him?"--(John Bunyan makes the guide enquire of Christiana while a shepherd boy is singing beside his sheep)--"I will dare to say this boy leads a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called _hearts-ease_ in his bosom, than he that is clothed in silk and purple."

Shakespeare has connected this flower with a compliment to the maiden Queen of England.