It wouldn’t be spring without tulips. They pop up like targets
in a shooting gallery, in perfectly coordinated clumps, and in great swaths of every colour of the rainbow. That’s
largely thanks to The Netherlands where they’ve been growing and breeding more varieties
for us to enjoy for the last four hundred years.
But that’s not the beginning of the tulip story. It began, oh,
a thousand years ago when someone, wandering through a valley in the
Mountains of Heaven, spotted a delightful little wildflower.
It would have been familiar to local people but unknown to travelers from
Europe. And so began a long journey west along the ancient silk road, the route
traders had travelled for centuries carrying goods between East Asia with
Southern Europe.
The Mountains of Heaven, or the Tien Shan Mountains as
they’re known, are in the border region between North west China and Kazakhstan.
However, the tulips growing there would not have looked like the ones growing
in the front garden. Though similar, these wild tulips would have been much smaller
and wouldn’t have the unusual colours and forms we see today.
Whoever that person was, they dug up a few bulbs thinking
they’d be nice to take home to Constantinople – now Istanbul, Turkey. At least
that’s where the tulip was first recorded as having been cultivated, as early
as 1055.
When the Ottoman Empire arose there
in the fourteenth century, the fortunes of the tulip rose with it. As for the
name, it’s possible it came from a Persian word for turban because it resembled
the headwear, or it could be because the Ottomans wore the flower on their
turbans like an elevated boutonnière. Regardless, the elite of society raved
about the tulip and it became a symbol of the Empire, and a material possession
that defined nobility. In Turkish culture where it became a symbol of paradise,
it gained an almost divine status.
The Ottomans weren’t the only ones to go crazy about this unusual
flower with such deeply saturated petals. When Ogier de Busbecq, the ambassador
of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, dropped in on the Sultan of Turkey and
spotted tulips, he had to have them. No doubt he stuffed a few bulbs in his
diplomatic bag to take home to Vienna. This was in the sixteenth century and it
wasn’t long before tulips appeared in Amsterdam around the beginning of the Dutch
Golden Age. The country had become the leading maritime power of the day and
the economy was booming. Of course, those who could afford it wanted the latest
and greatest, and artists, like Instagram influencers of the day, were turning
out countless paintings to grace the walls of the wealthy. As tulips were
frequently depicted in art, this no doubt contributed to a demand for the real
thing.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsS8d0m1H2JDmwTM4oRmVGxoLSvlO-FlmWa8o9phyphenhypheneLi49RBpmvK23lu2gUS4912Tksb4LjCP5fZzQ7UsWv933J6_TQ_oJqcePXo4xstHWTiANeJz-CuDD7zgWGylIFIqsXNlvYCSyX5NjGBKC01iTP70Js1D3Ra8vM66zVQdkzFjvvjjHaS9Z6h0i0wM/s320/Flori-308.jpg)
Dutch breeders began producing ever more colours and forms.
Then, in the early part of the seventeenth century what came to be known as the
Rembrandt tulip appeared with its streaked, bicoloured flowers. Unlike earlier varieties
with more simple hues, this tulip had been afflicted with a virus that had caused
the tulip to mutate. It wasn’t called the
Rembrandt tulip
because the artist had painted them, although many still life paintings by other
Dutch masters of the day featured these remarkable flowers in their work; it
referred to the city of Leiden where Rembrandt was born, one of the earliest
regions to begin serious tulip growing.
As these unique tulips appeared, it set off a frenzy of
trading and the price of rare bulbs rocketed faster than a speeding Bitcoin. The
period became known as tulip mania, suggesting the whole country was involved
in a huge economic bubble founded on these plants. Fortunes were certainly won
and then lost when the market collapsed, however more recent studies have since
revealed that it was hardly the market crash of 2008 and it was only a
relatively small number of traders that were involved.
Regardless, the Dutch began breeding and hybridising,
producing an ever-wider range of colours and forms from almost black to one
that resembles the top of a raspberry ice cream cone. The Rembrandts of today,
meanwhile, are free of the virus and that colour shift is now fixed in a
limited number of colours.
Other varieties have surpassed them the Rembrandt tulips, especially
the fringed varieties with their finely incised petals and the even more
flamboyant parrot tulips, with ruffled and ornate petals splashed with flame-like strips or feathery patterns. Why parrot? Possibly it
was the feathery petals or the beak-like shape that some saw, although the name
might have appeared after the famous seventeenth century French engraver
Nicolas Robert referred to them as perroquet de trois couleurs.
Regardless, this resulted in the Netherlands becoming the
major tulip grower in the world, exporting three billion bulbs annually. Over 15,000
hectares of farmland there are now dedicated to producing
these bulbs. In spring, when tulips are in full bloom, huge fields are striped blankets
of colour, perhaps the inspiration for the paintings of American artist Gene
Davis.
During springtime in The Netherlands
those painted fields are amazing, but not for long. Within days the colour
vanishes. As though an edict from the Queen of hearts has been issued, it’s off
with their heads, millions of them, left to fade away along the furrows. To the
casual observer unaware of the process, it must be heartbreaking, and yet it’s an
essential step in bulb production that takes place in late April.
Like combine harvesters on a prairie
wheat field, similar equipment criss-crosses the tulip fields, shearing off the
flower heads. This stops the plant from producing seed, and instead, energy is
directed into growing the bulb in the soil below. By July the foliage has died,
and the real harvest begins. In much the same way as Prince Edward Island
farmers harvest potatoes, specialized equipment traverses the fields, lifting
the bulbs from the soil.
To aid the process in heavier soils the
bulbs are planted between layers of net that are then simultaneously rolled up
by the machine for reuse, just one stage in a highly automated mobile
industrial operation. The netting isn’t needed in sandy areas as bulbs are more easily released from the soil.
The bulbs are then conveyed along, any
remaining foliage and leaf litter is removed, soil is shaken free, and the
bulbs are washed before they’re loaded onto convoys of trucks. The next stage
takes place in a processing facility where the bulbs are again washed and
sorted, and smaller offshoots are separated from the main bulb.
These small ones will be replanted to
produce future crops. Further along the line, the flaking, papery layers
similar to onion skin are removed. The bulbs continue along a conveyor belt where
they’re scrutinized by teams of seasonal workers, the only part of the process
that isn’t automated. This is where diseased or damaged bulbs are tossed aside,
and any stray roots are removed by hand. After a final wash and dry the bulbs
are sorted and stored until it’s time for export when they’ll arrive in stores here
in September ready for fall planting.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkQj4WdeBBcsIj45xyiK1R9OQ8AdMNABvmDYsOA8J8FOtxkYJ2ilNmdirs7TQ0TfsvSkgzkvoajH5UyqvleyAF2Wiu-_2Hy5R796Shyphenhyphen41v5myrMEZwruT1sC-hJVnoDiX-7_8umWQAkUIgITtfOdwCRTthTAPL92bQ5xzXFwMpEcXqFbL2Y6BybdP0ig4/s320/Floriade-1-29.jpg)
The sight of the tulip fields in the
Netherlands is a magnificent, though short-lived sight, and there are several
locations where they can be viewed. The most famous area is along the North Sea
dunes, between the cities of Leiden and Den Helder, but there are other places
in The Netherlands where tulips and other spring flowers can be seen in full bloom
for weeks. The most famous of these is Keukenhof near the city of Lisse, an
hour’s drive from Amsterdam.
Keukenhof, formerly part of the nineteenth century estate of Baron and Baroness Van Pallandt, is a 32-hectare park that is only open for a couple of
months each spring when it welcomes close to a million visitors who arrive to
view the glorious displays. These are created each fall when
four and a half million tulip bulbs in a hundred varieties, plus another
three million or so other flowering bulbs are planted.
And then there’s the fragrance. Fewer than 20 percent of
tulip varieties are fragrant, mainly in shades of orange, but at Keukenhof
there are plenty of other sweetly scented flowers. A half dozen hyacinths near the
patio are always a delight, but when a breeze carries the output of a thousand,
it’s incomparable.
A trip to see and experience this is certainly worthwhile,
however there is a comparable display much closer to home and that’s the
Canadian Tulip Festival held annually in Ottawa. In 2021 it will run for ten
days from May 14 to May 24.
The festival began when the Dutch royal family sent 100,000
tulip bulbs to Ottawa in 1945 after the second world war ended. This was in
gratitude to Canada for providing refuge for the future Queen Juliana whilst
The Netherlands was under Nazi occupation.
The royal family continues to send 10,000 bulbs each year in
addition to 10,000 more from the Dutch Bulb Growers Association. The Festival
also commemorates the unforgettable role of Canadian troops in the liberation
of the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands is the primary producer of tulip
bulbs, Canada has a small share of the market.
Vanco Farms in Prince Edward
Island is enhancing the red soil of the province by growing tulips instead of
potatoes. Besides producing bulbs for gardeners, the farm also grows millions
of tulips for the cut flower market. After harvesting, the best of the bulbs
are stored in large coolers under winter temperatures. When introduced to a
warm greenhouse and planted, the bulbs are tricked into believing spring has
arrived early. By planting successive crops blooms are produced from January to
May to fill bouquets for stores throughout the Maritimes and Quebec.
In the garden is the place to see them growing, bringing
colour to our world as winter fades. That pretty wildflower from Asia, after a
journey of a thousand years from the Mountains of Heaven, and enhanced through
centuries of breeding, has found a home in Canada.
It just wouldn’t be spring without tulips.