Tulipa, tulip . [1] Collectors consider the tulip simply as a flower, and maintain that it lacks only a pleasant fragrance in order to be the most beautiful flower in the world, one which, when it unfurls its infinite variety, outshines every other flower from March until the end of May.

According to flower growers, fine tulips are distinguished by their novelty, the beauty of their colours, the strength and height of their stems, and the shape of their flowers, which must be rounded without terminating in a point.

A beautiful tulip must have.

1. A strong stem which is neither too tall nor too short. The average weight of the majority of fine tulips regulates the size of their stems, which should be sufficiently strong but not too broad.

2. The flower should be composed of six tepals, of which the three inner tepals should be broader than the three outer tepals, without which the flower would be defective.

3. The base of the flower should be proportioned to the top, and the ends of the tepals should be rounded and not pointed. [2]

4. A tulip which is finely-shaped when it begins to flower, but becomes elongate two or three days later and is ruined, is not prized.

5. Tulips which, having flowered, invert their inner or outer tepals, which curl or close up, are scorned.

6. The tepals should be thick and full in order for the flower to be long-lasting: a tulip which is not long-lasting is little valued, however beautiful it may be, and tulips with thin tepals are scorched by the sun’s heat before they have flowered.

7. Although all tulips are somewhat convex, those which are the most upright are the most prized.

8. Bizarre colours pass for being the most beautiful, and the most finely-shaded form the most beautiful stripes. The more the colours depart from red, the more they are prized, because the flowers make a finer impression, with the exception that reds on a white ground colour are of merit. Among the reds, the best shades are fire and pomegranate. Bizarres with white bases and greys with yellow bases are sought after. If the colouring is glossy it is highly regarded, whereas if it is matt it is considered defective. Tulips which preserve their fine colours for less than ten or twelve days after having flowered should scarcely be prized, whereas those which retain their colours for their whole flowering season are highly regarded.

9. The smallest bases form the finest markings, especially when they are of the same colour both inside and outside. This principle should be well understood: it is crucial to forming the most reliable judgement of what the colours will do.

The outside of the base is composed of circular or starred nails at the bottom of the tepals in the cup. The inside of the base is the thickness formed by the bottom of the tepals which overlap, so that if the nails are white, and if by lifting them with one’s finger nail the inside is seen to be yellow, this yellow colour, when rising in the marking, fades as it passes through the white of the nail.

10. The stamens should be brown and not yellow; the colour of the roots is unimportant.

Tulips are generally divided into two groups according to their flowering seasons: the first is composed of early tulips, and the second of late tulips. There are others, called mid-season tulips, which flower between early and late tulips, but they do not constitute a separate group.

Early tulips are not as beautiful, tall, or varied as late tulips, because flower growers, who raise them from bulbs imported from Flanders and Holland, limit them to forty-one, which are each given a name of the locality in which they are raised. [3]

Late tulips are so numerous that it is impossible to list them, and some are so diversely coloured that flower painters are unable to imitate their variety. Although their colouring is one of the least beautiful, these tulips are none the less the most prized, because they alone are capable of improving, and provide the best seeds for gathering.

One also distinguishes between different sorts of variegations, which have been named ‘Palto’, ‘Morillion’, ‘Agathe’, ‘Marquetrine’, etc. The latter is the most prized, especially when its markings stand out clearly against the ground colour without being reduced in size, begin in their colours, and are stopped by a small edging resembling a silk thread.

There are also mottled tulips in which the diverse colours blend together like jasper. Some tulips may be called doubles, because they bear over twenty tepals. There are also tulips with bi-coloured tepals. Paragons are tulips which reappear each year with clear markings.

A variegated tulip should have the same qualities as a self with regard to the foliage, stem, shape, and base. The first variegation appears in large lines of different shapes: the markings are well defined, stand out clearly against their colours, and do not take from the ground colour. The second variegation, called ‘with eyes’, comes in large clearly-pounced pieces, and does not take from the ground colour. The third variegation takes the form of large embroidery, which stands out clearly against its colours and does not take from the ground colour. It is perfect when it appears on finely-shaded bizarres. The fourth variegation is that of fine embroidery: when it is clear and stands out against its colours it is attractive, but this is occurs only when it is found on bizarres with several shades; when it appears on other colours it looks too much like gold or silver brocade. Other variegated tulips, in which the markings rise from the base, can be quite beautiful when the markings are clear and divided with the colours. All variegated tulips in which the markings and colours are equally divided are the most visually pleasing, each one according to its type.

I will not enter into detail on the cultivation of tulips, since this would lead me too far; the subject has moreover been exhausted by Miller in The Gardener’s Dictionary, and by Morin in De la culture des fleurs, which is printed at the end of La Quintinie’s work, not to mention the treatises published in Flemish and Dutch, these two peoples being the biggest tulip collectors. [4]

In particular, the care with which the Dutch used to cultivate tulips before they developed a taste for carnations and auriculas is well known. In 1634, and for the following five years, there was such a phenomenal tulip trade in Holland, and especially in Haarlem, that it is comparable with the speculation in shares of 1719 and 1720. [5] These flowers came to fetch such exorbitant sums, that if there were no indubitable evidence, posterity would scarcely believe such extravagance. Several townsmen left their shops and businesses in order to cultivate tulips. Munting has left us details of a deal struck by a private individual for a single tulip called the ‘viceroy’: the buyer, having no money, obtained this rare tulip for two lasts of wheat (thirty- six setiers of Paris), four lasts of rice, four fatted oxen, twelve fatted ewes, eight fatted pigs, two hogsheads of wine, four tuns of beer, two casks of butter, a thousand-pound weight of cheese, one bed, clothes, and a large silver cup, the whole estimated at 2,500 florins, that is, over 5,000 pounds of our change. [6]

During the same period, another individual offered twelve acres of good land for a tulip bulb, but his offer was rejected. In an auction, a profit of 9,000 florins was made from a tulip collection belonging to a flower grower. An inhabitant of Brussels owned a small garden in which, by an extraordinary property (apparently that of well-ground rubble), single-coloured tulips broke into beautiful feathered tulips. Bulbs were sent to this man from every corner of the globe, to be grown at his house for a considerable sum. Finally, tulipomania grew to such an extent that the Estates General looked into the matter, and, judging it harmful to both individuals and commerce, put an end to this madness by the most serious express laws.

Notes

1. From the Turkish ‘dülbend’, meaning turban. When admiring tulips near Adrianople (now Edirne) in 1554, ambassador Busbecq heard his guide compare the form of the tulip to a turban, and erroneously thought that ‘dülbend’ applied to the flower. The Turkish for tulip is actually ‘lâle’ (Huxley et al., 1992, iv.529; article ‘Tulip’, Wilfrid Blunt, in Jellicoe et al., 1991, p. 567).

2. In Turkey, pointed tepals were the ideal during this period (Huxley et al., 1992, iv.529).

3. These are listed in article ‘ Tulipa ’, Miller, 1768.

4. La Quintinie, 1700. Tulips were introduced to northern Europe by the Flemish botanist Carolus Clusius, or Charles de L’Ecluse (1526-1609) who, as prefect of the imperial gardens in Vienna from 1593-77, received some bulbs upon Busbecq’s return to Vienna from Constantinople (see above, n. 20). Clusius supervised the planting of the Hortus Academicus at the University of Leiden in 1594. He wrote descriptions of tulips and in 1576 he was the first to report their tendency to ‘break’ into multi-coloured forms. Now known to be caused by a virus, this phenomenon gave rise to tulipomania in Holland (article ‘Clusius’, Florence Hopper, in Jeilicoe et al., 1991, pp. 122-3; Huxley et al., 1992, iv.538).

5. This is a reference to the extraordinary speculation in John Law’s trading company Le Mississipi during the regency, which ended in a dramatic fall and the collapse of Law’s system of financial reform in October 1720. Interestingly, this period of speculation in France coincided with the Turkish phase of tulipomania under Ahmet III (1702-20); Cobban, 1961, i.22-5; Huxley et al., 1992, IV.529.

6. A setier was equivalent to two minas or pounds during the Ancien Régime, while a ‘muid’ or hogshead was equivalent to thirty-six seders (Jones, 1990, p. 311).