Aligning Anna Mendelssohn with the nineteenth-century, feminised genre of floral poetry, this essay traces Mendelssohn’s demarcations tulips from 1974 to 1995. Through a series close readings tropes, identifies early preoccupations that contribute her great poem, “Silk and Wild Tulips”, first published in For Mendelssohn, flowers stand for an inarticulable, idealised form communication, thinkin...