History Islamic world (1804) The
Turkish and
Persian people were the first to cultivate tulips. While the cultivation of tulips in
Iranian gardens dates back to the 10th century, the westward expansion of diverse tulip varieties into Asia Minor occurred most significantly under the Seljuk dynasty. The Persian poet
Omar Khayyam's 11th-century poetry frequently featured the tulip as a symbol of ideal feminine beauty. Early cultivars must have emerged from hybridisation in gardens from wild collected plants, which were then favoured, possibly due to flower size or growth vigour. The tulip is not mentioned by any writer from antiquity, therefore it seems probable that tulips were introduced into Anatolia only with the advance of the
Seljuks. and today, 14 species can still be found in Turkey. reports that in 1574, Sultan
Selim II ordered the Kadi of
A'azāz in Syria to send him 50,000 tulip bulbs. However, John Harvey points out several problems with this source, and there is also the possibility that tulips and
hyacinth (
sümbüll), originally Indian
spikenard (
Nardostachys jatamansi) have been confused. Sultan Selim also imported 300,000 bulbs of
Kefe Lale (also known as Cafe-Lale, from the medieval name Kaffa, probably
Tulipa suaveolens, syn.
Tulipa schrenkii) from
Kefe in
Crimea, for his gardens in the
Topkapı Sarayı in
Istanbul. They seem to have consisted of wild tulips. However, of the 14 tulip species known from Turkey, only four are considered to be of local origin, so wild tulips from Iran and Central Asia may have been brought into Turkey during the Seljuk and especially Ottoman periods. Also, Sultan Ahmet imported domestic tulip bulbs from the Netherlands. The gardening book ''Revnak'ı Bostan
(Beauty of the Garden
) by Sahibül Reis ülhaç Ibrahim Ibn ülhaç Mehmet, written in 1660 does not mention the tulip at all, but contains advice on growing hyacinths and lilies. However, there is considerable confusion of terminology, and tulips may have been subsumed under hyacinth, a mistake several European botanists were to perpetuate. In 1515, the scholar Qasim from Herat in contrast had identified both wild and garden tulips (lale) as anemones (shaqayq al-nu'man
) but described the crown imperial as laleh kakli
. Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, also names tulips in the Baburnama. He may actually have introduced them from Afghanistan to the plains of India, as he did with other plants like melons and grapes. The tulip represents the official symbol of Turkey. In Moorish Andalus, a "Makedonian bulb" (basal al-maqdunis
) or "bucket-Narcissus" (naryis qadusi
) was cultivated as an ornamental plant in gardens. It was supposed to have come from Alexandria and may have been Tulipa sylvestris'', but the identification is not wholly secure.
Introduction to Western Europe in
Lisse, Netherlands Although it is unknown who first brought the tulip to Northwestern Europe, the most widely accepted story is that it was
Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq, an ambassador for
Emperor Ferdinand I 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." However, in 1559, an account by
Conrad Gessner describes tulips flowering in
Augsburg,
Swabia in the garden of Councillor Heinrich Herwart. In Central and Northern Europe, tulip bulbs are generally removed from the ground in June and must be replanted by September for the winter. It is doubtful that Busbecq could have had the tulip bulbs harvested, shipped to Germany and replanted between March 1558 and Gessner's description the following year.
Pietro Andrea Mattioli illustrated a tulip in 1565 but identified it as a narcissus.
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 work on tulips in 1592 and made note 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 tulips at Leiden would eventually lead to both the
tulip mania and the tulip industry in the Netherlands. Over two raids, in 1596 and in 1598, more than one hundred bulbs were stolen from his garden. Tulips spread rapidly across Europe, 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 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 wealthy displays embraced the exotic plant market, especially in the Low Countries where gardens had become fashionable. A craze for bulbs soon grew in France, where in the early 17th century, entire properties were exchanged as payment for a single tulip bulb. 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, supplying Dutch, Flemish, German and English buyers. The trade drifted slowly from the French to the Dutch. Between 1634 and 1637, the enthusiasm for the new flowers in Holland triggered a
speculative frenzy now known as the
tulip mania that eventually led to the collapse of the market three years later. 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 UK's
National Collection of English florists' tulips and Dutch historic tulips, dating from the early 17th century to c. 1960, is held by Polly Nicholson at
Blackland House, near
Calne in Wiltshire.
Introduction to the United States Arboretum and Botanical Garden It is believed the first tulips in the United States were grown near
Spring Pond at the Fay Estate in
Lynn and
Salem, Massachusetts. From 1847 to 1865, Richard Sullivan Fay, Esq., one of Lynn's wealthiest men, settled on located partly in present-day Lynn and partly in present-day Salem. Mr. Fay imported many different trees and plants from all parts of the world and planted them among the meadows of the Fay Estate.
Introduction to Canada During World War II, Seymour Cobley of the
Royal Horticultural Society donated 83,000 tulips to Canada from 1941 to 1943 to honour
Canadian involvement in the war. In 1945 the
Dutch royal family sent 100,000 tulip 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 requesting that a display be created for the hospital, and promised to send 10,000 more bulbs each year. By 1963 the
Canadian Tulip Festival featured more than 2 million tulips, rising to nearly 3 million by 1995. "Unlike many flower species, tulips do not produce nectar to entice insect pollination. Instead, tulips rely on wind and land animals to move their pollen between reproductive organs. Because they are self-pollinating, they do not need the pollen to move several feet to another plant but only within their blossoms." Tulips can be propagated through bulb
offsets,
seeds or
micropropagation. Offsets and
tissue culture methods are means of
asexual propagation for producing
genetic
clones of the parent plant, which maintains
cultivar genetic integrity. Seeds are most often used to propagate
species and
subspecies or to create new
hybrids. Many tulip species can
cross-pollinate with each other, and when wild tulip populations overlap geographically with other tulip species or subspecies, they often hybridise and create mixed populations. Most commercial tulip cultivars are complex hybrids, and often
sterile. Offsets require a year or more of growth before plants are large enough to flower. Tulips grown from seeds often need five to eight years before plants are of flowering size. To prevent cross-pollination, increase the growth rate of bulbs and increase the vigour and size of offsets, the flower and stems of a field of commercial tulips are usually
topped using large tractor-mounted mowing heads. The same goals can be achieved by a private gardener by clipping the stem and flower of an individual specimen. Commercial growers usually harvest the tulip bulbs in late summer and grade them into sizes; bulbs large enough to flower are sorted and sold, while smaller bulbs are sorted into sizes and replanted for sale in the future. Because tulip bulbs do not reliably come back every year, tulip varieties that fall out of favour with present aesthetic values have traditionally gone extinct. Unlike other flowers that do not suffer this same limitation, the tulip's historical forms do not survive alongside their modern incarnations. •
Div. 1: Single early – with cup-shaped single flowers, no larger than across. They bloom early to mid-season. Growing tall. •
Div. 2: Double early – with fully double flowers, bowl shaped to across. Plants typically grow from tall. •
Div. 3: Triumph – single, cup shaped flowers up to wide. Plants grow tall and bloom mid to late season. •
Div. 4: Darwin hybrid – single flowers are ovoid in shape and up to wide. Plants grow tall and bloom mid to late season. This group should not be confused with older Darwin tulips, which belong in the Single Late Group below. •
Div. 5: Single late – cup or goblet-shaped flowers up to wide, some plants produce multi-flowering stems. Plants grow tall and bloom late season. •
Div. 6: Lily-flowered – the flowers possess a distinct narrow 'waist' with pointed and reflexed petals. Previously included with the old Darwins, only became a group in their own right in 1958. •
Div. 7: Fringed (Crispa) – cup or goblet-shaped blossoms edged with spiked or crystal-like fringes, sometimes called "tulips for touch" because of the temptation to "test" the fringes to see if they are real or made of glass. Perennials with a tendency to naturalize in woodland areas, growing tall and blooming in late season. •
Div. 8: Viridiflora •
Div. 9: Rembrandt •
Div. 10: Parrot •
Div. 11: Double late – Large, heavy blooms. They range from tall. •
Div. 12: Kaufmanniana – Waterlily tulip. Medium-large creamy yellow flowers marked red on the outside and yellow at the centre. Stems tall. •
Div. 13: Fosteriana (Emperor) •
Div. 14: Greigii – Scarlet flowers across, on stems. Foliage mottled with brown. •
Div. 15: Species or Botanical – The terms "species tulips" and "botanical tulips" refer to wild species in contrast to hybridised varieties. As a group they have been described as being less ostentatious but more reliably vigorous as they age. •
Div. 16: Multiflowering – not an official division, these tulips belong in the first 15 divisions but are often listed separately because they have multiple blooms per bulb. They may also be classified by their flowering season: • Early flowering: Single Early Tulips, Double Early Tulips, Greigii Tulips, Kaufmanniana Tulips, Fosteriana Tulips, Species Tulips • Mid-season flowering: Darwin Hybrid Tulips, Triumph Tulips,
Parrot Tulips • Late season flowering: Single Late Tulips, Double Late Tulips, Viridiflora Tulips, Lily-flowering Tulips, Fringed (Crispa) Tulips, Rembrandt Tulips
Neo-tulipae A number of names are based on naturalised garden tulips and are usually referred to as neo-tulipae. These are often difficult to trace back to their original cultivar, and in some cases have been occurring in the wild for many centuries. The history of naturalisation is unknown, but populations are usually associated with agricultural practices and are possibly linked to
saffron cultivation. Some neo-tulipae have been brought into cultivation, and are often offered as botanical tulips. These cultivated plants can be classified into two Cultivar Groups: 'Grengiolensis Group', with picotee tepals, and the 'Didieri Group' with unicolorous tepals.
Horticulture Tulip bulbs are typically planted around late summer and fall, in well-drained soils. Tulips should be planted apart from each other. The recommended hole depth is deep and is measured from the top of the bulb to the surface. Therefore, larger tulip bulbs would require deeper holes. Species of tulips are normally planted deeper. == Consumption and toxicity ==