Tulipa Fosteriana Among tulip species, which to my mind are
the most attractive of wild bulbs, T. Fosteriana is magnificent. I would recommend all gardeners to try a few bulbs of this rare, easy and really glorious tulip, the largest of the Turkestan species and only rivalled for size and colour by the similarly exclusive T. Gregii. Fully opened flowers of T. Fosteriana have been known to measure ten inches across, the flower like some huge scarlet saucer centrally blotched either with black or gold or with these colours combined. T. Fosteriana, which flowers in April, has never presented any difficulties of cultivation to me. Planted in ordinary loam on an un- sheltered ledge of the rock garden, bulbs flowered the first year, though badly persecuted by mice, and continued to flower a second year, but without increasing. According to the late W. R. Dykes, whose incomplete volume on tulip species is almost as glorious as the tulips themselves, T. Fosteriana is very slow to increase. Like many other tulip species, it yields various forms which flower slightly earlier or later than the true type, and has charming leaf variations from glaucous green to bluish grey. Bulbs offered by English firms are, as usual, obviously meant to attract millionaires. The Dutch, somehow, do these things just as well and at a tenth of the price.
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