Historical Wildtulips

The beauty of wild tulips, which can form immense fields in nature, was no doubt the reason why they were collected long ago and ended up in gardens. Because they are so variable in appearance, people started selecting the extra striking forms from them. Later, people started crossing species and the best seedlings were propagated. Such was the case with the first tulip, a red one, described in the West (1559), which had been raised from seed originating in Turkey. Over the next 300 years, new tulips were introduced from all over Pre-, Central and Central Asia, while more and more tulips were cultivated in the West.

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