"The Anemones likewise or Windeflowers are so full of variety and so dainty so pleasant and so delightsome flowers that the sight of them doth enforce an earnest longing desire in the mind of anyone to be a possessoure of some of them at the leaste. For without all doubt this one kind of flower, so variable in colours, so differing in form (being almost as many sortes of them double as single), so plentifull in bearing flowers and so durable in lasting and also so easie both to preserve and to encrease is of itselfe alone almost sufficient to furnish a garden with flowers for almost half the yeare. But to describe the infinite (as I may so say) variety of the colours of the flowers and to give each his true distinction and denomination it passeth my ability I confesse, and I thinke would grauell the best experienced in Europe." (Nevertheless he writes of about fifty varieties.) Of fragrant crane's-bills, bear's-ears, primroses and cowslips. Of violets, borage, marigolds, campions, snapdragons, columbines and lark's-heels (delphiniums). Of gillyflowers (why have we given up this old-fashioned English name?), and how pleasant is the mere reading of his list of varieties--"Master Bradshawe his daintie Ladie," "Ruffling Robin," "The Fragrant," "The Red Hulo," "John Witte his great tawny gillow flower," "Lustie Gallant," "The fair maid of Kent," "The Speckled Tawny." "But the most beautiful that ever I did see was with Master Ralph Tuggie,[93] the which gilliflower I must needes therefore call 'Master Tuggies Princesse,' which is the greatest and fairest of all these sorts of variable tawnies, being as large fully as the Prince or Chrystall, or something greater, standing comely and round, not loose or shaken, or breaking the pod as some other sorts will; the marking of the flower is in this manner: It is of a stamell colour, striped and marbled with white stripes and veines quite through every leafe, which are as deeply iagged as the Hulo: sometimes it hath more red then white, and sometimes more white then red, and sometimes so equally marked that you cannot discern which hath the mastery; yet which of these hath the predominance, still the flower is very beautifull and exceeding delightsome." Of peonies, lupins, pinks, sea-holly and sweet-william. Of lilies of the valley, gentian, Canterbury bells, hollyhocks and mallows ("which for their bravery are entertained everywhere unto every countrey-woman's garden"). Of foxgloves, goldilocks, valerian and mullein. Of cuckoo-flowers, "or Ladies smockes," both the double and the trefoil. The first kind, Parkinson tells us, "is found in divers places of our owne Countrey as neere Micham about eight miles from London;" also in Lancashire, "from whence I received a plant, which perished, but was found by the industrie of a worthy Gentlewoman dwelling in those parts called Mistresse Thomasin Tunstall, a great lover of these delights. The other was sent me by my especiall good friend John Tradescant, who brought it among other dainty plants from beyond the seas, and imparted thereof a root to me." Of clematis and candytufts, honeysuckles and jasmine. Of double-flowered cherries, apples and peaches. "The beautiful shew of these three sorts of flowers," he says, "hath made me to insert them into this garden, in that for their worthinesse I am unwilling to bee without them, although the rest of their kindes I have transferred into the Orchard, where among other fruit trees they shall be remembered: for all these here set downe seldome or never beare any fruite, and therefore more fit for a Garden of flowers then an Orchard of fruite. These trees be very fit to be set by Arbours."
Society Review
The Old English Herbals — Part 104
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