Flowers

For Little Rock Public Radio, this is Dan Boice, with Naming Arkansas.
The lush vegetation of Arkansas, including flowering plants, has given names to many places, such as Pansy in Cleveland County and Rosebud in White County. The town of Tulip in Dallas County might seem to be another. The town was settled in the 1830s and first called Brownsville and then Smithville, for Col. Maurice Smith. But Smith allegedly argued to change the town name to Tulip, because he said that there more tulip trees growing there than Smiths. Others claim the name comes from the acronym for the five Calvinist tenets of Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the saints. Journalist Ernie Deane, who loves a good story as much as anyone, regretfully suggests that it’s more likely that the name comes from the nearby Bayou de la Tulipe, probably named by a Frenchman named Tulipe. But whether Frenchman, tree, or doctrine, the town of Tulip still proudly displays its flowers and churches along Highway Nine.
For the University of Arkansas at Monticello this is Dan Boice.