Tulips

The tulip is one of the most popular spring flowers. It is easy to plant in any garden and brightens up the grey days of winter with its brilliant colors. A tulip grows from a bulb, which is planted in the ground in autumn. The bulb stores all the nutrients the plant needs to grow.

Tulips can grow to between 10 and 70 centimeters tall. The plant consists of a stem with several green leaves growing from it, and a flower. Tulip flowers are usually bell-shaped and can be white, yellow, orange, pink, red, blue or even black. The outer flower parts grow around the outside; they close in the evening and open again in the morning. They protect the stamens and stigma inside.

Pollen sticks to the sticky stigma. A capsule then forms, containing seeds. When the plant dies, the capsules fall to the ground, split open, and release their seeds. New plants can grow from them and develop bulbs.

Tulips also have another way of reproducing. After the plant has flowered, the old bulb dies. At the same time, several new bulbs develop underground, and these can grow into new tulip plants the following spring.

Tulip bulbs are now grown in large quantities, especially in the Netherlands. But 500 years ago, the plant was unknown in Europe. In 1554, a man named Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq became an envoy of the future Emperor Ferdinand I at the Sultan's court in Istanbul. There, he was given some tulip bulbs, which he sent to an acquaintance. The acquaintance studied the plant and cultivated it. Later, he became a professor at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Some tulips were then stolen from his garden. Soon, the plants became widely available on the open market and turned into fashionable flowers. In the 17th century, the tulip was considered the queen of flowers. At one point, people offered as much as 10,000 guilders for a single bulb of a particularly beautiful tulip variety. That was the price of a townhouse in Amsterdam. Tulips are nowhere near as expensive today, but they are still highly prized by flower lovers.