TULIPS
(Last updated 12/2/03)

April, and fields are in bloom during my annual visit(s) to the Wooden Shoe Bulb Company near Woodburn, OR (left) - most of the overview pix below are from the late 1999 and 2000 seasons, which turned out to be particularly good ones. A tractor is poised to lop the flowering tops off their unsuspecting stems as soon as visiting days are over (right)

Wild tulips can be found in parts of Europe, and a Cretan vase estimated to be nearly 4000 years old is decorated with the tulip's likeness. However, their origins appear to be in western and central Asia, mainly Armenia, the Caucasus, and Persia, from which they spread along the Black Sea to Russia, throughout the Mediterranean, and to China.

The wild tulip's natural habitat is mountainous; many varieties bloom, flower, then wither within the first few weeks of spring. The tulip's bulb - plus a blanket of snow - protects the plant from the severe cold winters, and also from the hot, dry summers of its normal environment.

Records show that tulips were cultivated in Turkey before 1000 AD, and veterans of the Crusades described them on their return to Europe. Tulips were particularly popular at the height of the Ottoman Empire in the court of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566).

The Austrian ambassador (1555-62) to the Ottomans, Ogier Ghiselin, Count de Busbecq (1522-1592), described a number of flowers he saw at court to his (Holy Roman) Emperor Ferdinand I, among them the "tulipan". The origin of the word is uncertain, but one explanation is that it's the Latinized version of "toliban," or turban, from the flower's resemblance to the headgear of the Persians, who at the time were a part of the Ottoman Empire.

On his return in 1563, the ambassador brought back many manuscripts describing the civilization, culture, and politics of the Ottomans - and also tulip bulbs. Within a few years, tulips were flowering in Vienna, where the Dutch botanist Carolus Clusius, director of the Royal Medicinal Garden, first worked with them. By 1578, tulips had appeared in England, and by 1598 in France, but it was the bulbs planted by Clusius (and Cluyt, his assistant from Delft) when he moved to the University of Leiden in 1593 that sparked their modern history and made the tulip synonymous with Holland.

Tulips thrived in the hands of the Dutch, and by the early 1600's many new hybrids had been created; the first parrot tulip (right) was described in 1630.

The first large scale Dutch cultivation operations began south of Haarlem in 1600, and by 1610 a lively trade had developed as Dutch aristocrats coveted exotic mutations as symbols of status and power. By 1623 bulbs were being sold while still in the ground and speculation in bulb futures, called the "wind trade," was rampant. The period starting in 1634 was the height of "tulipomania," and by 1637 some bulbs sold for the price of a good house in Amsterdam. During this period, people abandoned jobs, businesses, and families to become tulip growers.

The market finally crashed in 1637 when a law was passed that decreed the end of the wind trade, bankrupting many, including some of the country's most powerful families. But Dutch growers regrouped, and soon developed new flower types with large heads and two-tone "flamed" colors - now called "Rembrandt tulips" after the era of the Dutch masters like Brueghel who featured them in their still life bouquets. Fortunately, by 1640 Dutch settlers in America's New Amsterdam had established the tulip as their "national" flower; and by 1700, Turkey, which continued to prize the tulip, was hit by its own version of tulip mania and began to import bulbs from Holland in significant numbers. Sultan Ahmed III was particularly smitten, and by 1730, Lalizari, his "official tulip grower," had imported many thousands of bulbs from the Netherlands; by some accounts, the Sultan himself was eventually beheaded for the crime of "having spent too much money on the annual tulip festival"

Although thousands of hybrids were already known by the 19th century, the period from 1870-1890 saw the introduction of several important new tulip classes, including the Darwins in 1889, now the most commonly cultivated of tulips. Another significant introduction occured as late as 1943, when the enormous red Darwin hybrids (like Apeldoorn, left) were first released. Currently there are more than 3,500 tulip hybrids and species commercially propagated in the Netherlands, with over 3 billion bulbs produced annually on over 23,000 acres. Of these, 2 billion bulbs are exported, with over a million going to the US; those that remain behind are used mainly for the "forcing" of cut flowers

Tulips are categorized as singles, doubles (resembling peonies - right), or multiflowered; as early, medium (Triumph, Darwin) or late flowering; by stem length; and by petal characteristics - lily (left), parrot (center), fringed (right). They are also classified by source: many garden cultivars derive from hybrids of Tulipa gesneriana, while the botanicals have their origins in T. kaufmanniana, fosteriana, and greigii.

Flower color (left) varies from red to yellow to white, with oranges, pinks, lavenders, and countless colors in between, even dark, deep purples that closely resemble the holy grail of the hybridizer, the "black." Cultivars showing some green on their petals are called viridiflora (center), and there are many bicolored cultivars as well (right).

Interesting links: Bulbs: Tulips | Wooden Shoe Bulb Company

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