Anne here, and today I’m talking about tulips.
It being spring in my corner of the word, last week I went with friends to a tulip festival up in the Dandenong Mountains, on the outskirts of Melbourne. They’re not very high mountains, but they're beautiful, with many wonderful gardens, as well as lots of gorgeous natural bushland, with tall gum trees and graceful tree ferns. They are also, it seems, the perfect place for growing tulips and other bulbs.
Many of the tulip growers are of Dutch origin. In fact a good friend of mine came out to Australia when he was a small child, along with his tulip growing parents and many older siblings. And what did they do? They started a tulip farm in the Dandenongs. As did many other Dutch migrants. So what is it with the Dutch and tulips?
Tulips originally grew wild in Central Asia, and were first cultivated in Iran (Persia) as early as the 10th century. They became incredibly popular in Turkey in the 16th century, at the time of the Ottoman Empire, when the Sultan demanded cultivation of particular blooms for his pleasure. The name 'tulip' came from the Turkish word for turban. Tulips were treasured, and became a symbol of Ottoman power. You can see tulip images in paintings, ceramics and tiles of the time.