When does a passion become an obsession? For Anna Pavord, it began with a small net of bulbs purchased by her husband on a business trip to Amsterdam. She planted them in her garden and when they emerged in late April, no two were alike. The tulip ‘Gudoshnik’, with its creamy yellow petals flecked by spots of red and rose is complex, elegant, and beautiful. Pavord was hooked.
Three Tulips (Red Shine, Black Parrot, Gudoshnik) by Irving Penn, NY, 1967
The outcome of Pavord’s obsession was the unlikely international best-seller, The Tulip, published in 1999. Modestly describing herself as the “kind of person that likes finding out stuff,” Pavord spent more than seven years researching and writing the manuscript, producing the first comprehensive study of the tulip in more than seventy years.
Tulips’ Noons Wyt’, ‘S. Pietter’ and ‘Admiral Pottenbacker’ from a tulip book by Jacob Marrell (1614-1681) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Tulips from Les Velins du Roi by Nicholas Robert (1614-1685)
A political, social, economic, religious, intellectual and cultural history of just one flower, The Tulip traces its influence on trade over multiple centuries and cultures. A tale of speculation, intrigue and greed when published twenty years ago, during the dot com bubble, the book proved eerily prescient to the prevailing economic climate of the time. Its story, a cautionary tale of the impact of irrational investment in the pursuit of wealth and beauty, brought the history of the tulip and Tulipomania to the forefront.
Flower piece by Jan Brueghel (1568-1625)
Twenty years on, the complex history of the tulip continues to enthrall. In the revised and redesigned 20th – Anniversary Edition of The Tulip, Pavord brings the reader up to date on recent developments. The book includes a new preface, a revised listing of the best tulip varieties to choose for your garden, and a reorganized listing of species that reflects the most recent work of taxonomists. A chronology of the tulip, extensive notes, and a bibliography provide additional background information that supports Pavord’s meticulous research.
Tulip in a Kendi by Dirck van Delen (1604/5-1671) painted in 1637, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
An unruly genus, more than any other flowering bulb the tulip defies the careful parameters of botanists and taxonomists. The very characteristics that made the tulip a source of wonder and delight conspire to make the bulb equally difficult to categorize. Seventy-eight different species are believed to exist in the Old World, mainly in Central Asia. All belong to the family of Liliaceae and grow from bulbs, covered in a dark brown or black skin, called a tunic.
T. sylvestris from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (1809)
As the tulip migrated from east to west, its unpredictable coloration, now known to be the result of a virus, made the flower both a prize and a project. The focus of plant breeders, nurserymen, and florists’ societies, the tulip served as a popular subject for artists and artisans alike, celebrated across genres and cultures. From its use as an ornamental jewel-like feature adorning the turbans of Ottoman sultans, to its systematic planting in formal garden beds, the tulip was prized like no other flower.
Unglazed Iznik tiles c. 1580 – 1590, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto
By the time the tulip arrives in Holland in The Tulip, Pavord has charted its journey from the East throughout Northern Europe, England and France. While Holland cannot claim first rights to the tulip, it remains the country that maintains the closest relationship with the flower.
Tulips and an ichneumon fly from the Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta decorated by Joris Hoefnagel c 1590
At one time the quest for the perfect tulip drove Holland’s market in bulbs to cataclysmic, ruinous heights (with the price of one bulb of ‘Semper Augustus’, deemed the most beautifully marked of all red and white tulips in the seventeenth century, equivalent to three times the average annual wage in the country.) Today more than a million tulips are sold a day during peak season.
Two ‘Semper Augustus’ from a tulip book by Brandemandus, Municipal Archives, Delft
From our twenty-first century perspective the rage for tulips that drove Tulipomania seems unlikely, as the flower is so widely available. In Holland, forcing tulips for the cut flower trade is more lucrative than providing bulbs. To support the demand for cut flowers, half of the bulb fields in the Netherlands are planted with the same twenty cultivars and the cut flower market in tulips is dominated by just ten cultivars (should you wonder why all the tulips you buy look the same). This is described by Pavord as “a hideous reductio ad absurdum for a flower that nature equipped with more than a thousand tricks.”
At more than four hundred and fifty pages in length, The Tulip, is an all-encompassing epic that leaves no historical detail uncovered. Pavord follows the lengthy history of the flower as it is reinvented over and over again; coveted, abandoned and rescued to become the popular cut flower that it is today. Lavishly illustrated, this edition of Pavord’s classic magnum opus is an invaluable reference for any home gardener or landscape historian to read and savor.
This review appeared in Leaflet: A Massachusetts Horticultural Society Publication, January, 2020
Copyright © 2020 Patrice Todisco — All Rights Reserved
