A Timeless History
Tulips grow wild across the mountains of Central Asia and were cultivated by the Ottomans long before Europe saw one. They first flowered in the Netherlands in 1594, and by the 1630s rare bulbs were changing hands for many times a craftsman's yearly wage. The market broke in February 1637. Nearly four hundred years later the Netherlands is still the centre of the world's bulb trade.
SourceRijksmuseum — rijksmuseum.nl · Encyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com
Science In Action
Six stamens and one three-lobed stigma stand inside the cup — look for them when the flower opens fully • Thermonasty — petals open as the temperature rises and close as it falls — move one from cool to warm and watch • The bulb holds next year's flower already formed — which is why tulips need a cold winter before they bloom • Broken colour — the flames on seventeenth-century tulips were a virus, carried from plant to plant by aphids
SourceRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew — kew.org · Royal Horticultural Society — rhs.org.uk
Arts
Dutch still-life painters recorded the broken tulips in enormous detail, partly because a panel could cost less than one rare bulb and lasted far longer. Canvases like this one in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam are now the best surviving record of flowers that no longer exist.
SourceRijksmuseum — rijksmuseum.nl
Applications Today
A tulip in a vase keeps growing — up to several centimetres after cutting — and bends towards light. It is one of the few cut flowers that visibly moves, which is why arrangers either fight it or design around it.
SourceRoyal Horticultural Society — rhs.org.uk · Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — kew.org
The tulip belongs to the lily family, Liliaceae, alongside the fritillary and the lily itself.
Flora's Mallewagen (De Mallewagen alias het valete der Bloemisten) — satirical print on the tulip trade of 1637 — attributed to Crispijn van de Passe (II), Northern Netherlands; engraving with letterpress verses — 1637 — Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam — RP-P-OB-77.710
