The article analyzes one of the most complex and multilevel florosymbols in the work of A. Dumas-father - “black tulip”. The author establishes that his sources were the images of the tulip in the preceding French and German literature of the 17th - 19th centuries. (Godot, Corbeville, Corneille, the Marquis de Montosier, Labruier, Voltaire, Kleist, Goethe, Affsprung). Dumas plays a big role in black color with its many meanings: secrets, black envy, nobility of a semifantastic flower. The influence of this flower-image on the image of a selection plant in the literature of the XIX century is considered. (J. Sand, S. Baudelaire, J.-C. Huysmans)