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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 Front, Central and Central Asia, while more and more tulips were cultivated in the West. Holland played a central role in the tulip trade from the beginning. During the Tulipomania (1634-1637), a single bulb of the cultivar “Admiral van Enkhuijsen” brought a sum of 5,400 guilders, equivalent to of 15 annual wages of a bricklayer. Today, there are some 5,500 registered cultivars; old ones have disappeared, new ones keep coming up. Only by continuing to use them in the garden or cold greenhouse can the old cultivars - valuable Dutch heritage! - can be preserved. The cultivars offered here are a selection from the historical tulips cultivated for us on a limited scale.
To view the other bulbous plants with historical value, click here.
