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.
A Dutch botanist called Carolus Clusius increased the popularity of tulips in Europe during the late 16th century. Partly fuelled by the discoveries of new plants in the New World, gardening and cultivation and the collection of plants was becoming a pursuit and a passion for all sorts of people across Europe, from monarchs to university academics. This was a time when botanic gardens first began to be planted.
In 1573 Carolus Clusius planted tulip bulbs at the Vienna Imperial Botanical Gardens and that was the start of his botanical research into tulips. He is considered one of the most eminent botanists of the European Renaissance, and his influence on tulip breeding continues to the present day. He was later appointed as director of the Leiden University (in the Netherlands) botanic garden, the oldest botanical garden of Europe, planting tulips there in late 1593. (You can read more about Carolus Clusius here.)
Tulips had reached the Netherlands, and were about to bloom in popularity! In fact, the Dutch became so passionate about tulips that in 1636 it sparked a phenomenon known as ‘tulip mania.’ During this time, tulip bulbs became incredibly valuable and were traded like stocks on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. At the height of this mania, some rare tulip bulbs were worth more than a house in Amsterdam! People were even stealing tulip bulbs from other people's gardens!
There was an inevitable crash in prices in 1637, when people came to their senses and stopped purchasing the bulbs at such crazy prices, but interest in the tulip remained, and the Dutch to this day retain their position as the leading breeders and growers of tulips.
Today, in the Northern Hemisphere, tulips are the second most popular flower to send on Valentine’s Day after roses. (Not in Australia, where they bloom in September.) Photo on the left by ioann-mark-kuznietsov on Unsplash
At the tulip festival that my friends and I attended, as well as the glory of the flowers — and the farm is set in a gorgeous garden with all kinds of spring flowers in bloom — there were loads of tulip and Dutch-themed displays, from clogs and windmills and girls wearing complete Dutch national costumes, to the selling of delicious Dutch food treats like poffertjes. There’s a recipe here if you want to try them.
But the real treat was the tulips, with their vivid colours and silky petals.
It was a wonderful day out, and we were very lucky with the weather. But now I’m home again, the tulips we bought have dropped their petals, and I’m back in front of my computer, working on my next book.
What about you — have you been anywhere fun lately? Do you like tulips? Have you ever grown them? What’s your favorite spring flower?