Mid-April Gardens #5

Tulip
Originally uploaded by Randuwa

As "every dog has its day" so too, "every tulip has its story".... or, at least, this one does.

Blooming in a most obscure corner of my wild, woodsy backyard, this tulip has been blooming for me now for 18 years! It began its life in Holland; I purchased its bulb in an Amsterdam market in December of 1990. Its first 5 springs were spent basking in the sun and breezes of my central Kentucky home -- a home on the edge of a field that was very much the short-grass prairie.

Since the spring of 1995, it rises from the base of the stump of a once grand white oak. Ivy surrounds it, but to no avail that seems to hinder it's annual resurrection in its eastern woodlands home.

You may not know this, but tulips are native to the steppes of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). The word "tulip" is actually a corruption of the Turkish word for "turban." You can see the resemblance.

They were first imported to Europe, so legend says, by the ambassador of the Austrian Hapsburgs, a Mr. Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, from the court of the Süleyman the Magnificent in Constantinople (i.e. Istanbul) around 1554. It's an auspicious introduction that resulted in a royal fetish for the flower. They were given from one royal court to another. They were planted in secluded gardens. They were guarded. They were coveted. They were stolen by thieves in the way works of art are absconded from the walls of museums today. And finally, they were grown and traded as a commodity by the Dutch to such an extent that their value literally made some men rich and led to the ruin of others in the 1630's. And among the most prized of all were the so-called black tulips.

And then there's this humble descendant of that actually deep purple strain whose longevity defies reason. I might not re-mortgage my home to have it, but I'd give a gilder or two all over again for such a faithful harbinger of April....