Vipul Ved Prakash

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One crucial element of the beauty of the tulip that intoxicated the Dutch, the Turks, the French, and the English has been lost to us. To them the tulip was a magic flower because it was prone to spontaneous and brilliant eruptions of color. In a planting of a hundred tulips, one of them might be so possessed, opening to reveal the white or yellow ground of its petals painted, as if by the finest brush and steadiest hand, with intricate feathers or flames of a vividly contrasting hue. When this happened, the tulip was said to have “broken,” and if a tulip broke in a particularly striking ...more
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
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