Tulip are Old World, rather than New World, plants, with the origins of the species lying inCentral Asia. They became an integral part of the gardens of the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenthcentury onward, and, soon after, part of European life as well. The Netherlands, particularly, becamefamous for its cultivation of the flower.
     A tenuous line marked the advance of the tulip to the New World, where it was unknown in thewild. The first Dutch colonies in North America had been established in New Netherland by theDutch West India Company in 1624, and one individual who settled in New Amsterdam (Today’sManhattan section of New York City) in 1642 described the flowers that graciously colonized thesettlers’ gardens. They were the same flowers seen in Dutch still-life paintings of the time: Crownimperials, roses, carnations, and of course tulips. They flourished in Pennsylvania too, where in 1698William 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 thelength of the journey between Europe and North America created many difficulties. ThomasHancock, an English settler, wrote thanking his plant supplier for a gift of some tulip bulbs fromEngland, 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 Dutchimmigrants who quickly colonized the plains of Michigan. Together with many other Dutchsettlements, 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. OneDutchman, Hendrick van der Schoot, spent six months in 1849 traveling through the United Statestaking orders for tulip bulbs. While tulip bulbs were traveling from Europe to the United States tosatisfy the nostalgic longings of homesick English and Dutch settlers, North American plants weretraveling in the opposite direction. In England, the enthusiasm for American plants was one reasonwhy tulips dropped out of the fashion in the gardens of the rich and famous.
35. Which of the following question does the passage mainly answer?
(A) How did tulips become popular in North America?
(B) Why did Dutch settlers import tulips to the United States in the 19th century?
(C) What is the difference between an Old World and a New World plant?
(D) Where were the first Dutch colonies in North American located?