Parrot Tulip, Green Wave

No other flower captures the magic of spring like the Tulip. Wild tulips are indigenous to the parts of the Middle East once occupied by the Ottoman Empire and to Siberia. Sometime between 1100 AD and 1300 AD, the Persians began to cultivate the wild bulbs. Under cultivation, the small, vividly colored flowers were transformed into stately specimens with blossoms in all the striking colors of the rainbow. It was the Dutch that introduced the Europeans to the tulip in 1562. In that year, a Dutch nurseryman established the first tulip nursery. Today, according to The International Register published by The Royal General Bulbgrowers’ Association in the Netherlands, there are more than 5500 tulip varieties.

Perhaps the most famous and astonishing event in the history of the tulip occurred in the 3 years from 1634-1637. This period in tulip history is known as “The Tulipmania”. A frenzy developed around tulip bulbs and throughout Europe, the rich, the middle class and the working class attempted to purchase whatever tulips were available. One tulip, in particular, a red and white striped variety named Semper Augustus became so valuable that a single bulb was commanding a price the equivalent of 15 years’ wages for an average worker. As quickly as it started, “The Tulipmania” ended.

Tulips reached the New World with the first Dutch colonists who settled in what is now Manhattan and coastal New York State in 1624. The Tulip has captured the imagination of the world for nearly a millennia. It has built economies, inspired artists and brought joy and pleasure to the everyman. Along with the rose, it is truly the “World’s Flower”.

The cultivated tulip is often not a stable plant. Without provocation, a single bulb may change the shape, size and color of its blossom. The change is known as a “break”. When a “break” occurs a ‘normal’ tulip of a single color will be transformed into a plant bearing a blossom with multi-colored, fringed or feathered petals. In 1928, the biological mechanism that caused these “breaks” was finally discovered and described by a British mycologist, Dorothy Cayley, who had been studying tulips in London. Cayley found that aphids on tulips carried a virus which infected the bulb. Infected tulips, today, are known as Parrot Tulips and are highly prized for their exotic blossoms.

Plant 6-8” deep and 6” apart.