A Partial History of The Tulip

 I seem to be buying tulips almost every week.  I do love them and they appear to be increasingly ubiquitous and incredibly varied.  This has aroused in me a certain curiosity about their back story, their history, and in researching that story, I have uncovered a veritable flower garden of delightful tulip information. This is a partial history because the full history I discover, would fill at least one book!

Fields of tulips in Lisse, Netherlands

Tulips were originally found, growing wild, in the landscape stretching from Southern Europe to Central Asia, and thus, in their natural state, they were at home on steppes and in mountainous areas in temperate climates. But, since the seventeenth century, they have become widely naturalized and cultivated.  Flowering in the Spring, they become dormant in the summer once the flowers and leaves have died back, emerging above ground as a shoot from the underground bulb in early Spring.

Semper Augustus
antique drawing.
See below.

The Persian and Turkish peoples were the first to cultivate tulips, as early as in tenth century Persia, and tulips were certainly growing in Iranian gardens by the tenth century while, by the fifteenth century, they were among the most prized of flowers, becoming the national symbol of the later Ottomans. Although tulips were cultivated in Byzantine Constantinople as early as 1055, they did not come to the attention of Northern Europeans until the sixteenth century when diplomats to the Ottoman court observed and reported on them. Although it is unknown who first brought the tulip to North-western Europe, the most widely accepted story is that it was Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq,  an ambassador for Emperor Ferdinand 1 to Suleyman the Magnificent.  According to a letter, he saw "an abundance of flowers everywhere; Narcissus, hyacinths, and those in Turkish called Lale, much to our astonishment because it was almost midwinter, a season unfriendly to flowers."  

Keukenhof Gardens

The Persian poet Omar Khayam’s 11th-century poetry frequently featured the tulip as a symbol of ideal feminine beauty. However, in 1559, an account by Conrad Gessner describes tulips flowering in Augsburg, Swabia in the garden of Councillor Heinrich Herwart. They were rapidly introduced to Northern Europe helping to create the absurdity of an investment bubble, a speculative frenzy, during what has become known as the Dutch Tulip Mania of 1634-1637 and this led to the invention of the ceramic tulipiere, devised for the display of cut flowers, stem by stem. Vases and bouquets including tulips often appeared in Dutch still life painting during the Dutch Golden Age, becoming strongly associated with the Netherlands, the major producer of tulips for world markets ever since.. To this day, tulips are strongly associated with the Netherlands and the cultivated varieties are often called Dutch tulips with the Keukenhof Gardens boasting the world’s largest permanent display of tulips. 

Loudon's Hortus Botanicus
Catalogue of all plants indigenous,
cultivated in, or introduced to Britain.

Carolus Clusius is largely responsible for the spread of tulip bulbs in the final years of the 16th century; he planted tulips at the Vienna Imperial Botanical Gardens in 1573. He finished the first major planting of tulips in 1592 and made extensive notes of the colour variations. After he was appointed the Director of the Leiden University’s newly established Hortus Botanicus, he planted both a teaching garden and his private garden with tulips in late 1593. Thus, 1594 is considered the date of the tulip's first flowering in the Netherlands, despite reports of the cultivation of tulips in private gardens in Antwerp and Amsterdam two or three decades earlier. These tulip plants at Leiden would eventually contribute to both the Tulip Mania and to the establishment of the tulip industry in the Netherlands. During the time of Tulip Mania, a viral infection of tulip bulbs had the happy side effect of creating variegated patterns in tulip flowers which were much admired, valued and propogated.  Tulip specimens of the variegated type currently available, are part of the group known as Rembrandts, so named because Rembrandt painted some of the most flamboyant blooms of his time.

Tulips spread rapidly across Europe during the sixteenth century, and more opulent varieties such as double tulips, were already known in Europe by the early 17th century. These curiosities fitted well in an age when natural oddities in many fields, were cherished especially in the Netherlands, France, Germany and England, where the spice trade with the East Indies had made many people wealthy. Nouveaux riches seeking status through wealthy tulip displays, embraced the exotic plant market, especially in the Low Countries where gardens had become expensively fashionable. 

Srinagar Tulip Gardens in Pakistan;
Asia's largest display of tulips.

The craze for tulip bulbs soon grew in France, where in the early 17th century, entire properties were exchanged as payment for a single tulip bulb. Tulip bulbs had become so expensive that they were treated as a form of currency, or rather, as futures, forcing the Dutch government to introduce trading restrictions on the bulbs. The value of the flower gave it an aura of mystique, and numerous publications describing varieties in lavish garden manuals were published, cashing in on the value of the flower. An export business was built up in France, which became an important tulip hub supplying Dutch, Flemish, German and English buyers.

 Iran.

The word for tulip in Persian is ‘laleh’ and this has become popular as a girl’s name and is also used to name commercial enterprises such as the Laleh International Hotel and in public facilities such as Laleh Park and Laleh Hospital. 

Persian tulip fields.

The celebration of the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, dating back over 3,000 years, marks the advent of Spring and tulips are used as a decorative feature during these festivities. The 12^th century Persian tragic romance, Khosrow and Shirin, similar to the story of Romeo and Juliet, tells of tulips sprouting where the blood of the young prince Farhad had spilt after he had killed himself upon hearing that his true love had died; a false story, discovered too late. The tulip was also a topic for Persian poets from the 13^th century and one famous poem, Gulistan, by Musharrifu’d-din Saadi, described a visionary garden paradise: “The murmur of a cool stream/bird song, ripe fruit in plenty/bright multicoloured tulips and fragrant roses …..”

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khameni

In addition, the tulip is the national symbol for martyrdom in Iran and in Shi’ite Islam generally and has been widely depicted on coins and postage stamps. It was a common symbol during the1979 Islamic Revolution, and a red tulip adorns the national Iranian flag redesigned in 1980. The sword in the centre, with four crescent-shaped petals around it, create the word ‘Allah’ as well as symbolising the five pillars of Islam. The tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khameini is decorated with 72 stained glass tulips, representing the 72 martyrs who died at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE, and the ubiquitous tulip is also used as a symbol on billboards celebrating casualties of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. The tulip also became a symbol of protest against the Iranian Govt. after the Presidential election in June 2009 when millions turned out on the streets to protest the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These legitimate protests were harshly suppressed and subsequently the Iranian Green Movement adopted the tulip as a symbol of their struggle. 

Iranian flag.
The current flag was adopted in 1979 when the Shah was overthrown.
The stylised Arabic inscription, 'Allahu akbar' [God is great]is repeated
22 times in honour of the date of the !(79 revolution.
The words 'Allahu akbar' are used by the muezzin to call faithful Muslims
to prayer five times a day. They are also an Islamic battle cry.

Ottowa Tulip Festival

  Introduction to Canada.

During WW2, from 1941-1943, Seymour Cobley of the Royal Horticultural Society, donated 83,000 tulip bulbs to Canada to honour Canadian involvement in the war. In 1945, the Dutch Royal Family sent 100,000 bulbs to Ottawa in gratitude for Canadians having sheltered the future Queen Juliana and her family for the preceding three years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In 1946 Juliana sent another 20,500 bulbs for a hospital display with a promise to send 10,000 more tulip bulbs each year. These generous tulip donations triggered the establishment of the Ottowa Tulip Festival which, by 1963, featured the inclusion of more than 2 million tulips, rising to nearly 3 million by 1995.

                                                             Addendum.

Semper Augustus tulip

 The Semper Augustus tulip could lay claim to a certain fame during the early seventeenth century. The beginning of the Dutch Golden Age saw unprecedented levels of prosperity through trade, and with strong disposable incomes, merchants and other nouveaux riches, in particular, sought ways to display their wealth but strictly within the Protestant value of modesty. Tulips, relatively recent arrivals, were much sought after for their novelty and beauty with the added charm for the elite, that the rarest, were expensive. The discreet Semper Augustus with its small scale flamboyance in petals and its high cost, presented a perfect but discreet example.  

Vintage tulipiere vase. 
One of many designed specifically for
exhibiting tulips to advantage.

  

 

   

 

. …