I hope I may be forgiven another “taxonomic” adventure for this month’s article. I find the investigation of plant families endlessly interesting, and the tulip family is one of the most fascinating of all.
Unlike the daffodil family, which I discussed last month, there is no tulip native to Britain. Their origin is much more centred on the Middle East and the latitude 40 degrees north, with extensions to Greece and the Balkans, the far South of Italy and of the Iberian peninsula (via North Africa), and as far East as northern China. Botanically tulips are all perennial herbaceous bulbous geophytes, so all types live longer than a single growing season, die down in winter, grow from a bulb and in soil. All forms have six petals (or multiples based on six), and all are hermaphrodite. Indigenous to mountainous areas with a temperate climate, they are a common element of both steppe and meadow vegetation in what is commonly known as a “Mediterranean climate” (with a definite bias towards winter rain and dry summers). They thrive in climates with long, cool springs. Part of the lily family (Liliaceae), there are around 75 species recognised worldwide, with the “type” species being Tulipa gesneriana, so designated in 1753, when the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus published a taxonomy (scientific botanic description) of the entire Tulipa family.
They were probably known to garden cultivation as early as the tenth century in what is now Iran, arriving in Byzantium about a hundred years later. Though widely cultivated in many areas of the Ottoman Empire, tulips only became popular in Europe during the sixteenth century. Brought originally by merchants importing them from areas where they were native, such as Turkey, tulips were frequently depicted in pictures of Dutch “Golden Age” painters, by which time they were popular garden flowers, the very strength and brightness of their colouring marking them out from what was already available.
Their cultivation, then as now, was particularly common in the Netherlands, and it was there that an extraordinary “tulip mania” originated (its reality has recently been challenged as at least an exaggeration, but it is certainly the stuff of legend, and of literature, as in Alexandre Dumas’ ”The Black Tulip”, published in 1850). Unsurprisingly, there are differing versions of the manic story, but in one version it originated with a variety called “Semper Augustus”, from the garden of Dr Adrian de Pauw, a Director of the East India Company. In 1624, it was described by Dutch doctor and chronicler Nicolas van Wassenaer as “white, with Carmine on a blue base, and with an unbroken flame right to the top”. This latter feature was caused by the virus Potyvirus tulipadefractum, which causes the petals to “break” with contrasting colour in a flame-like pattern (such varieties are popular to this day). Wassenaer’s description is not entirely accurate, since blue is an impossible colour for tulips, while the much-desired black, as in Dumas’ story, was only “almost” achieved in the year 2000, with the advent of the variety “Paul Scherer” (which still has some purple in it).
De Pauw’s refusal to sell any of his bulbs is said to have sparked the craze, which lasted as a speculative bubble for over a decade, with single bulbs of choice varieties allegedly changing hands for ten times the annual wage of a skilled worker (though this is a vague phrase, that could be the equivalent of half a million pounds today). Seemingly limited to the upwardly-mobile merchant classes, the crazed dealing in rare bulbs inspired the publication of pamphlets, reeking of religious rectitude, and decrying the manic speculation as a perversion of the moral order. The bubble burst in February 1637, with prices of even the most desired tulip varieties collapsing by up to 98 per cent. This all might seem bizarre to us nowadays, but perhaps we might recall such more modern monstrosities as the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s. In 2013, Nout Wellink, former president of the Dutch National Bank, described Bitcoin speculation as worse than tulip mania: “At least then you got a tulip, now you get nothing.”
Gardeners today are hopefully beyond such extreme folly, and now we have thousands of varieties to choose from. They all love the rich, well-drained soil of the huge Dutch bulb-fields, so we should try to imitate such conditions in our own plots, always remembering to wait until quite cold conditions to plant the bulbs – late October is fine. On sticky, clay soil modern hybrids are inclined to die out slowly after a few years’ fine flowering. In any case, some of them are, frankly, too tall and too stiff, and thus rather too inclined to blow over in spring gales; their dying foliage can also look miserable. Instead, I suggest you investigate the many fine, small species and their derivatives, such as Tulipa tarda, varieties of T. kaufmanniana, or T. clusiana. Many species tulips will cope with poorer soil and dryer conditions than the fancier hybrids, bringing a welcome stab of bright early colour to the rockery or the front of an herbaceous border. Left to quietly increase, and helped along by an annual dressing of bonemeal, such unfussy beauties provide joy for many years, and with the minimum of trouble.