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Easter Tulip (22)
NinaM
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 654 W: 0 N: 1623]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-n-g.gif) (5300) | NOTE: I am posting a picture in the workshop that I just received through email. It is just to show you how we feel, here in Quebec, about winter these days. It keeps on snowing and it is so coooold!
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I have been away from you the last days because I was too tired and the weather here has been strange. Lots of snow and grey skies, the worse was in the eastern part of the province with a huge snow storm. Spring makes itself truly expected this year!
Today is minus 10 Celsius and it is very windy. I know it is snowing in other part of the world. Spring wants to be wanted!
I wanted to post something different for Easter and couldn't think of anything except this tulip, synonym with spring and beautiful sunshine... and Holland.
Even though it is mainly grown nowadays, the tulips is native of central Asia. You will find below a summary of its history and where we can find them growing in the wild.
I know we are not supposed to post cultivated plants but I couldn't resist, as Easter goes with tulips, daffodils, chocolate, rabbits and chicks. Yellow and Purple. The rebirth of Christ. It is a very symbolic day.
The pagans were celebrating Spring Equinox, as nature was renewing itself and buds and plants were flowering and growing again. That turn of the season has always been celebrated throughout history. Most celebration included fertility rituals and a lot have been fantasized about it. Who wouldn't run naked in a field of marijuana and make love with everyone in offering to the God Pan??? !!!! ;-))
And catholics and christians, we celebrate Easter, which contains the same meaning with a different story... and different rituals. On and on it goes and I wish you a fantastic Easter, may spring bring to you joy and life and fertility for those who want it.
This is my gift to you, a simple tulip, truly photoshopped.
Francine
ISO 100
Resized for TN
Desaturated and only a little bit of colour left, worked in Picasa
TULIP HISTORY
A Rambling Romp through Tulip History
In history, the Dutch will be remembered for their passion for tulips. After 400-plus years, theirs is an enduring love affair. First introduced to Holland in 1593, the tulip has become a symbol for the country. Ask anyone, anywhere to name things that are "definitely Dutch" and the answer is going to include tulips, windmills and wooden shoes, usually in that order.
The Tulip Business
Since the 1600s, tulip growing has been a major crop for this flat low country situated just off the North Sea in Northern Europe, bounded by Denmark, Germany, France and Spain. Today nearly half of Holland's 47,150 acres of flower bulb farms are planted with tulip bulbs (23,412 acres). Other bulbs ranking highest in acreage (but far below the tulip) are lilies, gladioli, narcissi and hyacinth (in that order).
Every year about three billion tulip bulbs are produced in Holland Of these, approximately two billion are exported and one billion remain in the Netherlands. The vast majority of them are used for "forcing" of cut flowers and potted plants. The United States is the top importer of tulip bulbs, followed closely by Japan and Germany. Nearly one billion bulbs go to the USA -- most to home gardeners -- and once again, tulips take up the greatest share.
Where Tulips Come From
It is a widely-spread misconception that tulips and other bulb flowers are native to Holland, growing wild in remote areas still. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost no bulbous plants are native to this part of the world. For the origins of the tulip, we look to central Asia. This is site of their prime genetic center in the Tien-Shan and the Pamir Alai Mountain Ranges near modern day Islamabad, close to the border of Russia and China. From these areas, tulips spread to other regions including China and Mongolia to the east and to other regions to the west and northwest. A secondary genetic center developed in Azerbaijan and Armenia (Transcaucasia). From this area, tulips spread to locations which included far-flung parts of Europe. They are still encountered today growing wild in regions of the Balkans, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and France. In nature there are probably no more than one hundred and fifty tulip species native to Europe. But that number depends largely on how one defines "wild species".
One of these tulips, Tulipa celsiana, is found wild in southern France in the region around Toulon and Cannes. This miniature tulip grows there between the rocks, under extremely dry conditions. It is visible only for a short growth and flowering period in the early spring. Flowering is quickly followed by withering, and the plant then survives as small bulbs that not only serve to help it survive the winter but the summer as well. In any event, the advance of the tulip in nature never got so far that it reached the Netherlands, not even within 500 miles.
Tulips Call Mountains "Home"
The tulip's natural habitat is made up of mountainous regions. They are found growing there at very high elevations in the mountains, which means that they are often covered with a thick layer of snow during the winter period. This offers them good protection from the severe cold. In quite a few of these species the inner side of the skin that covers the bulb is covered with a thick hairy layer that provides extra protection. Not surprisingly these types are often called "wooly tulips."
Given this natural proclivity for high places, it is all the more remarkable that the Dutch should become known for growing tulips when their country is largely situated below sea-level and "enjoys" winters that are more wet than they are cold. Since these are not conditions that make tulips happy, the Dutch have invented systems that provide winter soil drainage. All through the surplus water quickly from the fields. From the ditches the water flowers to canals that flow to the sea. With a country below sea-level, it is not unusual to see water canals flowing through embankments that tower above the surrounding fields.
The Role Played by Turkey
Today most people (even in the Netherlands) still say that tulips originally came from Turkey and that is where their natural habitat is. But this is only partly true. A significant percentage of the tulips cultivated in the Netherlands originated from areas now considered part of Russia, around the Black Sea, in the Crimea, and from the steppes located north of the Caucasus. However in the 1500s when the tulips were first introduced into Europe, these areas belonged to what was called the great Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire or Persia. It is known that the Turks were cultivating tulips as early as 1,000 AD. Before tulips ever reached Europe, they had enjoyed a long and rich cultural history in Persia.
The Development of the Name "Tulip"
The most obvious explanation for how the tulip got its name was its resemblance to the headgear worn by many people in the Middle East, such as the Persians -- the turban, that was also written as "toliban". Changed into Latin, this became "tulipa". With a little imagination, the flowers of some tulips do look like a turban. The actual origin of the word is unknown.
Old Illustrations
FYI: As the tulip became known to select European botanists in the 1500s, gorgeous illustrations of tulips were being made, including the fabulous Tulipa bononiensis. What is strange is that these illustrations is that they always included some kind of butterfly, but butterflies seldom if ever land on tulip flowers. Equally odd, the famous flamed (virused) tulips that came to be known as "Rembrandt tulips" were not a favored subject of the painter, who rarely painted florals. Rather, the name of Rembrandt was applied for its historical timeframe, as Tulipomania occurred during the first half of the seventeenth century when the artists who become known as the Dutch Masters (artists including Rembrandt, Frans Halls, Breughel, and other famous Dutch artists of the era) were most active.
Four Hundred Years of Tulips
Dutch tulip history traditionally begins in 1593 when botanist Carolus Clusius, who had been known for his work in Prague and Vienna with medicinal herbs, came to Leiden in Holland to become head botanist of the new botanical garden or "hortus" at the University of Leiden. It was he who planted the first known tulips in Holland, assisted by Cluyt, a skilled botanist and pharmacist in the old town of Delft, located south of The Hague. |
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