WhatFinger


"A tulip doesn't strive to impress anyone. It doesn't struggle to be different from a rose. It doesn't have to. It is different."

The Fathers of the Tulip Business



The Fathers of the Tulip Business The Persians cultivated wild bulb flowers, notably the tulip from 10th century. The very word 'tulip' derives from the Persian word for turban. There, it has never lost its appeal and today is Iran's national flower. The Ottoman Turks took to cultivating spring bulbs on a grand scale--especially cyclamen, daffodil, hyacinth and, most popular the tulip. Tens of thousands of wild tulip bulbs were dug up annually to be planted in royal gardens, records botanist Anthony Huxley. It was this flower which gave Europe its first specialty, reaching Holland in 1562, he noted. Earlier in the same century, Western diplomats to the Ottoman court observed and reported on them.

Flemish writer, herbalist and diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq

Amongst them was the Flemish writer, herbalist and diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522-92) in the employ of three generations of Austrian monarchs. Ambassador in the mid-sixteenth century for the Holy Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire when ruled by Suleiman I, known to admiring Europeans as 'The Magnificent,' Busbecq was a true Renaissance man. His interests extended well beyond those of diplomat in which duties, truth be told, he was unsuccessful in negotiations with the wily Turks. While based in Constantinople he was able to travel and wrote prolifically on the flora and fauna he observed in Turkey, a valuable record of his times. Amongst these observations was, of course, the displays of tulips in the gardens of the leaders. As a keen gardener, Busbecq quickly dispatched bulbs of these novel flowers, unknown in the West, back to Vienna and his friend and fellow Fleming Charles de l'Ecluse, a pioneering botanist. Busbecq may also have been responsible for introducing the common lilac, Syringa vulgaris, into western cultivation. Native to the Black Sea littoral and grown in Ottoman gardens, he may have sent slips of the shrub to Charles de l'Ecluse in Vienna about 1562. This, however, has been contested. De l'Ecluse, whose name is commemorated in botany under the Latinization Clusius, is much-celebrated for pioneering the science of horticulture. Linnaeus was to name the genera Clusia in his honour, comprising 300-400 species native to tropical America. Also, thanks to Clusius' early work on European alpine plants, several also bear his Latin name: Gentiana clusii, Potentilla clusiana and Primula clusiana as well as, appropriately, Tulipa clusiana. If we have Busbecq to thank for obtaining tulip bulbs, it is his friend de l'Ecluse in Vienna who acclimatized them. A medical although non-practicing doctor he was a highly influential horticulturalist in his day. Thanks to his friendship with Busbecq, he had been appointed director of the imperial medical garden in Vienna by Emperor Maximilian II (1564-76). Some time in the late 1580 he moved to Frankfurt am Main, and 1592 wrote the world's first major work on tulips. A year later in 1593 he was appointed professor at the University of Leiden. He passed away there on 4th April 1609.

Support Canada Free Press


While he is best remembered for his work on tulips, Clusius was also responsible for the cultivation of potatoes and chestnuts, amongst other introductions new to Europe. However, it was in the final 15 years of his scholarly and adventurous life that his cultivation of tulips in the botanic garden at Leiden laid the foundation for today's Dutch tulip breeding and entire bulb industry. The Hortus Botanicus Leiden, the oldest in the Netherlands and one of the world's most venerable, was founded just three years prior to Clusius' appointment. It was there he observed the then strange ability of tulip blooms to "break" or become streaked with varying colours. Two centuries later this was revealed as due to a virus but at the time it was a strange and wonderful phenomenon. Clusius apparently died peacefully. Unfortunately the same can not be recorded for his fellow tulip enthusiast. In 1592, feeling his life was near an end, Busbecq travelled back to Flanders but was assaulted by members of the Catholic League near Rouen and died a few days later. Little did Busbecq realize that his innocent introduction would result in the infamous Dutch 'Tulipomania' of 1634-37. As Michael Pollan observed in The Botany of Desire: "The bubble logic driving tulipomania has since acquired a name: 'the greater fool theory.' Although by any conventional measure it is folly to pay thousands for a tulip bulb (or for that matter and Internet stock), as long as there is an even greater fool out there willing to pay even more, doing so is the most logical thing in the world."

History, it is said, may not repeat itself but does offer parallel examples. So it was almost a century later, that Turkey had its own form of tulipomania. Spring heralded massive tulip shows in the gated and guarded court yards of the Grand Seraglio in Constantinople. Open during the day but closed at sunset, at which time the wives and concubines would rush out into the light of torches borne by eunuchs. Things differ somewhat today. No more seraglios but March through May, Istanbul, as Constantinople has been since 1930, hosts the Lale Festival--Istanbul Tulip Festival. No less than 30 million tulips, it is claimed, are on display planted virtually wherever there is a clear space. Fittingly, perhaps, since it was here and not in Holland, where tulips were first commercial cultured. Despite this at times a turbulent history, as Marianne Williamson has declared, "A tulip doesn't strive to impress anyone. It doesn't struggle to be different from a rose. It doesn't have to. It is different."


View Comments

Wes Porter -- Bio and Archives

Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.


Sponsored