by Anna Pavord
1700
H. Van Oosten publishes De Needer Landsen Bloemhof in Leiden
1700
onwards
The tulip starts to be overtaken by the hyacinth
1703
Tulipomania in the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Sultan Ahmed III [1703–30]
1703
The Dutch Gardener by Henry van Oosten published in an English translation
1705
Nicholas Blundell plants ‘Anemonyes, Pilianthes…and Tulops’ in his knot garden at Little Crosby, Lancashire
1710
Steele’s teasing piece in the Tatler 31 August
1726
Defter-i Lalezale-i Istanbul (Notes of a Tulip Grower in Istanbul) published by Ali Emiri Efendi Kutuphanesi
1728
The manuscripts of Sheik Mohammed who was ‘lalizari’ or tulip grower (1728–30) to the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha show tulips in an advanced state of hybridisation. One manuscript lists 1,323 varieties
1729
Henry Woodman, nurseryman, sends tulips to Henry Ellison at Gateshead Park
1730
Nurseryman Samuel Smith advertises in the York Courant
1730
The Margrave of Baden-Durlach publishes a garden catalogue noting that he has bought bulbs from Dutch firms, 15 of them in Haarlem
1734
The Waermont and Gaergoedt dialogues are published again as a warning against speculation in hyacinths
1741
A list of the 2,400 tulips in the gardens of the Margrave of Baden-Durlach is published by G C Walthern
1742
Nurseryman James Maddock’s catalogue lists 665 different tulips
1746
The Dublin Florists’ Society is founded by Huguenot officers who fought for William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne
1750
The beginning of a decline in the tulip’s popularity
1750
Introduction of ‘Keizerskroon’, still cultivated on 23 hectares of land in Holland, the oldest tulip in production
1760
Traité des Tulipes by Le Père d’Ardène is published in Avignon
1760
Traité des Fleurs a Oignons by N van Kampen published in Haarlem
1760
Newspapers in Boston (US) advertise 50 different kinds of tulip for sale
1763
Dutch Florist by van Kampen translated into English
1768
Ancient Society of York Florists is founded
1775
Dr Tottie’s tulip sale in Oxford
1776
The celebrated Bybloemen tulip ‘Louis XVI’ is raised, probably in Flanders
1777
James Maddock’s catalogue lists 804 tulips
1780
Trade with Turkey opens up again
1786
First parts of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine published
1789
‘Louis XVI’ is first offered for sale (at 250 guilders a bulb) by the Dutch florist and nurseryman M van Nieuwekerk
1796
James Maddock’s catalogue lists 665 different tulips
1800
‘Louis XVI’ appears in the Walworth Nursery catalogue, priced at 20gns a bulb
1815
Victory at Waterloo
1820
Dutch breeders expand towards Overveen and Bloemendaal
1825
Opening of Britain’s first railway, the Stockton and Darlington line
1826
The great stud tulip ‘Polyphemus’ is raised by Mr Lawrence of Hampton
1827
A florist, Mr Goldham, is offered £100 for his ‘Louis XVI’ tulip
1830
English fancy at its height 1830–50
1835
The Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society is founded
1843
A Descriptive Catalogue of Tulips by John Slater
1845
‘Couleur Cardinal’ is introduced, still grown on 23 hectares in Holland
1845
Six hundred different kinds of tulip are bedded out in the Linnaean Botanic Garden, Long Island
1847
Launch of the Midland Florist
1849
Hendrick van der Schoot is the first travelling salesman (‘bollenreisiger’) to go to the US
1849
The National Tulip Society is founded
1850
onwards
Dutch breeders expand towards Hillegom, Lisse and Noordwijk
1850
Beginning of the decline in the English fancy
1850
Pre-eminence of Tom Storer of Derby, engine driver and tulip maniac
1854
Catalogue of nurseryman Henry Groom of Walworth offers three varieties of tulip at 100gns each
1860
Single Early tulip ‘Prince of Austria’ and Double Early ‘Murillo’ are introduced
1871
Association Football’s first cup final
1878
Albert Regel discovers T. kaufmanniana in Turkestan
1885
The sale of Jules Lenglart’s collection brings to an end a 300-year-long tradition of tulip growing in Flanders
1886
Darwin tulips are introduced by the firm of E H Krelage
1897
The great Tulip Conference of the Royal National Tulip Society is held at the Royal Botanic Society’s gardens, Regent’s Park, London
1901
The last of the traditional ‘public house’ shows held by a florists’ society (the Butley Tulip Society at the Orange Tree Inn, Butley)
1917
Report of the Tulip Nomenclature Committee
1928
Research by Dorothy Cayley of the John Innes Horticultural Institution, Merton, unravels the process of tulip ‘breaks’
1929
The Royal General Bulbgrowers’ Association publishes the first International Register of tulips
1936
Demise of the Royal National Tulip Society
1942
Survey of early tulip books published by E H Krelage
1943
Introduction of Darwin Hybrids by D W Lefeber
1975
Introduction of the first genetically manipulated Parrot tulip, the fuchsia-purple ‘Amethyst’
1994
Dutch growers export 2 billion bulbs to eighty different countries
Image Section
A plate from the Hortus Eystettensis (1613) a record of the collection of flowers in the garden of the Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt
‘Lawrence’s Polyphemus’ from The Florist’s Guide (1827) A Bizarre tulip raised by William Clark of Croydon and broken by Mr Lawrence of Hampton Court
Detail of sixteenth-century earthenware tile from Syria Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Tulips and cherry blossom on an Iznik dish c1550
An un-named bloom from The Book of Tulips c1725
Carolus Clusius (Charles de l’Ecluse), one of the most important of the sixteenth-century botanists who helped to spread the tulip through Europe
Tulipa praecox flava one of the many early woodcuts prepared for Clusius’s books
Tulips and an ichneumon fly from the Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta decorated by Joris Hoefnagel c1590
Detail from Allegory of Spring (1616)
by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625)
Tulips ‘Noons Wyt’, ‘S. Pietter’ and ‘Admiral Pottenbacker’ from a tulip book by Jacob Marrell (1614–1681) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Tulips on A Young Daughter of the Picts by the Huguenot artist Jacques le Moyne de Morgues (c1533–1588)
A tulip charger of English delftware London, 1661
Conflicting interests, as shown in the naturalist’s visit to the florist, a cartoon of 1798
Jacob Bomm’s tulip from Crispyn de Passe’s Hortus Flor
idus 1614
Tulip in a Kendi by Dirck van Delen (1604/5–1671) painted 1637 Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
‘Schoon Solffer’ Bartholomeus Assteyn (1607–1667) Historisch Museum, Amsterdam
Beste Bruyne by Pieter Holsteyn the Younger
‘De Vroege Brabantsson’ from the Judith Leyster tulip book (1643) Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem
A Vase of Flowers
Jan Brueghel I (1568–1625)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Life-size tulips painted on tiles, probably made at Hoorn in The Netherlands between 1630 and 1640
Three Tulips by Herman Henstenburg (1667–1726) Teylers Museum, Haarlem
The tulip ‘Double Oriflamme’ from John Hill’s Exotic Botany ‘illustrated in thirty-five figures of curious and elegant plants: explaining the Sexual System; and tending to give some new lights into the Vegetable Philosophy: Printed at the expence of the author, 1759’
English Florists’ tulips from William Peggs sketchbook c1813
The Bybloemen tulip ‘Louis XVI’ from the Florist’s Guide (1830) A very variable tulip, shown here with light and heavy markings. The former was more valuable. John Goldham, of White Cottage, White Conduitfields, London, refused £100 for his one bulb of this variety
Notes
Introduction
1 There are twenty-one azen to the gram. The weight was important, for the larger the bulb, the more likely it was to flower and to produce a precious offset, or daughter bulb.
2 Zbigniew Herbert, Still Life with a Bridle, London (1993).
3 OED ‘An infectious organism that is usually sub-microscopic, can multiply only inside living cells, in many cases causing diseases.’
4 Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Niew Nederlant (1655).
5 The tunic is the technical term for the outermost coat of a tulip bulb. It is generally papery in texture and varies in colour from a pale ginger to a dark chocolate brown. The ‘wool’ is an accumulation of fine, silky hairs which, in some species lie directly beneath the tunic, surrounding the fleshy sheaths of the bulb. In T. clusiana, the hairs stick up in a tuft from the apex of the bulb. The presence or absence of hairs beneath the tunic can help in the identification of species tulips.
Chapter I A Flower of the East
1 Irshad az-zara’ah c1515.
2 Babur-Nama trans. A S Beveridge (1922).
3 Istanbul University Library.
4 Tile panel with tulips of the sixteenth century, Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul.
5 D Yildiz, ‘Tulips in Ottoman Turkish Culture and Art’ in The Tulip: a symbol of two nations, M Roding, H Theunissen (eds), Utrecht/Istanbul (1993).
6 George Sandys, Travels, London (1615).
7 Mehmed Aski, Takvimu’l-kibar fi Miyari’l-szhar (1779) in Ali Emiri Efendi Library, Turkey.
8 Ahmed Refik, Esk: Instanbul, Istanbul 1931.
9 Surname in the Topkapi Palace Library.
10 Travels in Persia, 1627–1629, London, (1928).
11 In the Habibganj Collection, Aligarh Muslim University, India.
12 Miniature in the V&A Museum, London.
13 Miniature in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
14 Seyh Mehmed Lalezari, Mizanu’l ezhar [The Habit of Flowers] (1703), in Ali Emiri Efendi Library, Turkey.
15 Sir John Chardin Travels in Persia (1686).
16 Translated by H F von Diez under title Wage der Blumen, Halle-Berlin (1815).
17 Quoted in T Baker, Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society Vol. 56 (1931).
18 Translated from the original quoted in Le Père d’Ardene, Traité des Tulipes, Avignon (1760).
19 It was then bought by the bibliophile Robert de Belder, who built up an outstanding library of horticultural books (and an arboretum) at Kalmthout in Belgium. It came up for sale again at Christie’s in London on 19 May 1998, when it was sold for £100,000 to a private collector.
20 E H Ayverdi, Onsekizinci Asirda Lale, Istanbul (1950).
21 Turhan Baytop, Istanbul Lalesi, Ankara (1992).
Chapter II The Tulip in Northern Europe
1 Z R W von Martels, Augerius Busbequius…, Groningen (1989).
2 Les Observations de Plusieurs Singularités, third book, p208.
3 The letters were edited by F W T Hunger and published as Charles de l’Ecluse: Nederlandsch Kruidkundige 1526–1609 (1927).
4 Nicolas Wassenaer, Historisch Verhaal (1625).
5 Wassenaer op. cit.
6 Caspari Collino Pharmocopoeo, published in Strassburg in 1561 as an appendix to Valerius Cordus’s Annotationes in Pedacii which Gesner edited.
7 Described in the Historia generalis plantarum, Lyons (1587), based on the memoirs of Jacques Dalechamp, the French physician and botanist.
8 Published in facsimile as the Conradi Gesneri Historia Plantarum – Nachlass Van Conrad Gesnor (1516–1565) in der Universitatsbibliothek Erlangen, edited by H Zoller and M Steinmann, Dietikon-Zurich (1987–1991).
9 Kreutterbuch (1563), an album of watercolours by Kentmann in the Sachsischen Landesbibliothek, Dresden, contains a similar yellow tulip labelled T. turcica.
10 Florum et Coronarium Odoratarumque Nonnularum Herbarum Historia, Antwerp (1568).
11 M Lobelius, Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia, Antwerp (1576).
12 S Gobelius Plantarum seu Stirpium Icones, Antwerp (1581).
13 F. Stafleu and R. Cowan, Taxonomic Literature, Utrecht (1976).
14 Rariorum Plantarum Historia, Antwerp (1601).
15 Mira calligraphiae monumenta of 1561–1562, published in facsimile, Malibu (1992).
16 In the Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.
17 Aigentliche Beschreibung der Raiss… in die Morgenlander, Lauingen (1583).
18 The Theatrum Tuliparum in the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin is a similar work showing the tulips which flowered in the Berlin Lustgarten in 1647–1648.
19 Two volumes of Walther’s work, bought in the eighteenth century by Lord Bute, a keen gardener, are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
20 Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich.
21 Peter Thornton, Seventeenth Century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland, New Haven, (1978).
22 Purchased in 1888 by the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes.
23 Le Floriste François, traitant de l’Origine des Tulipes, Caen (1654).
24 English translation from Henry van Oosten, The Dutch Gardener, London (1711).
25 Tulips were certainly known and valued in Portugal. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a superb silver salver made in Lisbon in the mid seventeenth century, decorated around the rim with tulips of characteristically waisted shape and pointed petals.
26 Connoissance et Culture Parfaite des Belles Fleurs: des Tulipes rares, des Anémones extraordinaires, Paris (1696) published anonymously but probably written by de Valnay, Comptroller of the Royal Household.
27 John Rea, Flora, seu de Florum Cultura, London, (1665).
28 Les Caractères (1691).
29 John Cowell, The Curious and Profitable Gardener, London (1730).
30 La Théorie et La Pratique du Jardinage, Paris (1709) quoted in Garden History Vol. 21 (2), Mark Laird and John Harvey, ‘The English Flower Border 1660–1735’.
31 d’Ardène’s ‘theatre’ is a reference to the practice of displaying pots of tulips, like auriculas, on the shelves of small, open-air cabinets.
Chapter III Early British Growers
1 Thomas Fuller, Antheologia, London (1655).
2 Published in 1578 as a translation of Rembert Dodoens’s original Cruijdeboeck.
3 John Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, London (1597).
4 R E G Kirk and E F Kirk eds Returns of Aliens 1571–97 published by the Huguenot Society of London.
5 Hatfield House, Bills 58/3. The date amended to the modern calendar would be 1612.
6 National Portrait Gallery, London.
7 First used in 1623 by Sir
Henry Wotton: ‘It hath given me acquaintance with some excellent Florists (as they are stiled)’ OED.
8 The Hortus Siccus was made from flowers grown in the Duchess of Beaufort’s garden. Dried, pressed and beautifully arranged on the page, they provide a botanical record of this plantswoman’s extraordinary collection.
9 Ruth Duthie, Florists’ Flowers & Societies, Haverfordwest (1988).
10 Bodleian Library, Oxford.
11 MS. of Strode’s poems in Bodleian Library, Oxford.
12 Matthew Stevenson, Poems upon Severall Occasions (1645), Bodleian Library, Oxford.
13 Andrew Marvell, Upon Appleton House To My Lord Fairfax
14 Gibson, Description of Gardens near London in 1691, preserved in Archaeologia (1794).
15 The Retir’d Gard’ner (1706).
16 The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby, Lancashire published by the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (Crosby papers in the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Office, Preston, Lancs). I am indebted to David Tarver for bringing these papers to my attention.