A(very)LittleHistoryof theTulip-astoryofmania anddelight…

Late April though May brings the season of the tulip here in the UK. But undoubtedly beautiful as these flowers are, coming in such a wide variety of forms and colours, whether pastel or vibrant in hue, smooth petalled or whorled, frilly and stripes, no other flower has caused such an economic phenomenon as the tulip in seventeenth century Holland - or did it?

Almost half of the 120 known tulip species are native to central Asia, where they thrive in the extremes of baking hot summers and harsh, cold winters. The small, often bright red blooms were a potent emblem for nomadic people and a welcome sign of spring.

By the 11th century, Persian poets were celebrating the beauty of the tulip. Three centuries later, tulips were being transported from the wild to the palace gardens of Ottoman sultans, where they were highly prized. It's likely that ambassadors and envoys from western Europe first encountered them here.

The first tulip bulbs were probably brought to Europe by the French. Cargoes of bulbs arrived in Antwerp from Constantinople in 1562 long before they were shipped into Amsterdam. The first known European tulip bloomed in the garden of a Bavarian merchant around this time. Historical sources suggest that famed Dutch gardener Carolus Clusius was the first European to fully recognise their potential. He began planting specialised tulip nurseries around the time he became the director of the University of Leiden’s botanical gardens, in 1593.

By the first half of the seventeenth century, the tulip was starting to be used as a garden decoration instead of the former medicinal purposes. It soon gained major popularity as a trading product, especially in Holland. Around this time the Dutch were enjoying a period of unmatched wealth and prosperity. Newly independent from Spain, Dutch merchants grew rich on trade through the Dutch East India Company. With money to spend, art and exotica became fashionable collectors items. That’s how the Dutch became fascinated with rare “broken” tulips, bulbs that produced striped and speckled flowers. First these prized tulips were bought as showy display pieces, but it didn’t take long for tulip trading to become a market of its own.

Botanists started to hybridize the flower and they soon found ways of making even more decorative and