Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
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Author: Aramco ExPats Staff
Released 23 April 2004
Every April at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, over 100 acres of farm land bursts forth in a spectacular display of vibrant color. It is tulip season and on the Northwest coast of Washington State, hordes of people flock to behold this astonishing open-air exhibition.
Tulips bloom in triumphant succession following Spring's crocus, daffodils, and hyacinth creating full spectrums of intense color over acres of fields. Viewers travel the fields row by row gazing at the simple brilliance of each regal flower, then gazing across to absorb the impact of such color in replication, then gazing yet further across to take in the full beauty of swatches of color blocked side along side.
Photograph by Donna Rowell
Contributed by Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
While connected primarily to Dutch horticulture, the tulip is not a native Dutch flower.
The following is an excerpt from Tulips by Barbara Shulman.
“Widely available at modest prices today, tulips are still closely associated with the Netherlands. However, the tulip is not a native Dutch flower. Like many other products in western Europe, such as the potato and tobacco, tulips came to the Netherlands from another part of the world. Not introduced to the Netherlands until 1593, the tulip was first seen by Europeans in Turkey. It was there in 1556 that Busbeq (A.G. Busbequius), the ambassador sent by the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, witnessed the flowers growing in the gardens of Adrianople and Constantinople. Scholars now believe that the Turks had been cultivating tulips as early as AD 1000. Most of these tulips probably originated in areas around the Black Sea, in the Crimea, and in the steppes to the north of the Caucasus.
Soon after Ambassador Busbeq noticed the flowers in the Ottoman Empire, tulips became one of the most sought after luxury items in Europe. At first, in the 1560s, trade and diplomatic interaction with the Ottoman Levant allowed for a small number of tulips to be imported into Hapsburg Europe. In this early stage, tulip ownership was primarily limited to wealthy nobles and scholars. Antwerp, Brussels, Augsburg, Paris, and Prague are among some of the cities where such tulips first began to circulate.
A key figure in the history of European tulip interest is the famous botanist Carolus Clusius. Clusius, who had achieved great recognition for his work with medicinal herbs in Prague and Vienna, accepted a position as head botanist of the Dutch university in Leiden in the year 1593. Previously, he had met with former Ambassador Busbeq in Vienna and accepted several tulip bulbs and seeds. At Leiden’s innovative hortus botanicus, or botanical garden, Clusius cultivated the bulbs and seeds and thus introduced the flower to Holland.
Through botanical experimentation, Clusius and other horticulturists produced new color variations in tulips. This breeding of tulips with new color combinations had two important effects on the European — primarily Dutch — tulip market. The most elegantly and vividly colored of the new tulips, such as the Semper Augustus, which was white with red flames, became exorbitantly priced. Only the wealthiest aristocrats and merchants could afford these striped hybrid varieties. By the early 1630s, however, flower growers had begun to raise vast crops of more simply-colored tulips. These flowers, such as the Yellow Crown tulips, could be purchased cheaply by even the poorer segments of society. With an ever-growing number of varieties and an ever-widening price range, tulips became one of the few luxury goods that could be purchased by members of all classes."
Shulman, Barbara. Tulips, ©2004 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. University Libraries. Last Revised: Friday March 05, 1999. Read full article at http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/Products/tulips.html.
Photograph by Aramco ExPats
Several varieties and a spectrum of colors will give any gardener a moment of indecisive pause. At the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, garden exhibitions encourage bulb sales. On display in the gardens are Darwin Hybrids, Triumph Tulips, Single Early and Late Tulips, Fosteriana Tulips, Parrot Tulips, Lily Flowering Tulips, Double Tulips, Fringed Tulips, Greigii Tulips and Botanical Species Tulips. With names like Queen of the Night, Scarlet Pimpernel, and Abu Hassan the choices appear limitless but a full-color order guide make the job a bit easier.
....There were fortunes to be made from the mutations
That engendered hybrids by the hundredfold.
Pleats and ruffles, scarlet wicks and creamy swatches,
The ruby-veined undercup of the Semper Augustus,
From tightfisted roots the treasured clusters breaking open --
Behold the veritable bounty of beauty!
Excerpt from David Barber’s, “Thumbnail Sketch of the Tulip Mania."