Questions 30-39
Tulips are Old World, rather than New World, plants, with the origins of the species
lying in Central Asia. They became an integral part of the gardens of the Ottoman Empire
from the sixteenth century onward, and, soon after, part of European life as well. Holland,
Line in particular, became famous for its cultivation of the flower.
(5) A tenuous line marked the advance of the tulip to the New World, where it was
unknown in the wild. The first Dutch colonies in North America had been established
in New Netherland by the Dutch West India Company in 1624, and one individual who
settled in New Amsterdam (today's Manhattan section of New York City) in 1642
described the flowers that bravely colonized the settlers' gardens. They were the same
(10) flowers seen in Dutch still-life paintings of the time: crown imperials, roses, carnations,
and of course tulips. They flourished in Pennsylvania too, where in 1698 William Penn
received a report of John Tateham's "Great and Stately Palace," its garden full of tulips.
By 1760, Boston newspapers were advertising 50 different kinds of mixed tulip "roots."
But the length of the journey between Europe and North America created many
(15) difficulties. Thomas Hancock, an English settler, wrote thanking his plant supplier for
a gift of some tulip bulbs from England, but his letter the following year grumbled that
they were all dead.
Tulips arrived in Holland, Michigan, with a later wave of early nineteenth-century
Dutch immigrants who quickly colonized the plains of Michigan. Together with many
(20) other Dutch settlements, such as the one at Pella. Iowa, they established a regular demand
for European plants. The demand was bravely met by a new kind of tulip entrepreneur, the
traveling salesperson. One Dutchman, Hendrick van der Schoot, spent six months in 1849
traveling through the United States taking orders for tulip bulbs. While tulip bulbs were
traveling from Europe to the United States to satisfy the nostalgic longings of homesick
(25) English and Dutch settlers, North American plants were traveling in the opposite
direction. In England, the enthusiasm for American plants was one reason why tulips
dropped out of fashion in the gardens of the rich and famous.
【題組】31. The word "integral" in line 2 is closest in meaning to
(A) interesting
(B) fundamental
(C) ornamental
(D) overlooked
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