Caroline Sullivan, age 14, of Staten Island, N.Y., for her question:
WHERE DO TULIP BULBS COME FROM?
Thousands of different varieties of tulips are now available. They developed from a few species. The wide range of current flowers available were developed from a tulip of Asia Minor which was brought to Vienna from Constantinople, now called Istanbul, in the 1500s. The name tulip comes from a Turkish word which means turban. The flowers look a little like turbans.
Tulips come from Southern Europe and Asia. We associate the beautiful flower with The Netherlands since that country is the world's leading producer of bulbs and flowers.
A gardener will usually plant tulip bulbs in autumn. The bulbs require a well drained soil that is loamy and of average richness. The plants do produce seeds but only professional tulip growers or experimenters bother with seeds since they will not produce a flowering bulb for three to seven years. Most people plant bulbs.
Tulips bloom in spring. The plants grow from the bulbs, and the leaves and flower stems actually grow directly out of the bulb. The stem usually grows about two feet high. A dwarf variety produces stems that are only three inches tall. The tulip usually develops only one large, bell shaped flower at the top of its stem.
There are lots of different kinds of tulips in the nearly 2,000 varieties currently being produced. Some of the flowers are single while others are double. They come in almost every color you can imagine. Some flowers are streaked with several different colors.
When the tulip was first brought to Europe from Asia in the 1500s, it quickly became the most fashionable flower in both England and Holland. Interest in the flower in Holland, as a matter of fact, developed into a craze which was called Tulipomania between 1634 and 1637. Individual bulbs were sold for huge prices. People invested their life savings in tulips as a businessman might now invest in a speculative oil stock.
Many people lost fortunes in the tulip market in Holland during the mid 1600s. The government finally was forced to regulate the entire nation's trade in bulbs.
Today the cultivation of tulips is an important industry in both The Netherlands and around Holland, Michigan. Bulbs are commercially grown in a number of other American cities, too. Millions of bulbs are grown each year and sold to home gardeners.
Many new species of tulips which are now popular in Europe were discovered in Turkestan. Also, some of today's new varieties were developed in North America.
During the last two weeks each May in Ottawa, the annual Canadian Tulip Festival is held. During World War II, Queen Juliana, then a princess, lived in Ottawa while German troops occupied her country. After returning home, she sent the people of Ottawa 100,000 tulips bulbs in gratitude for the city's hospitality. Each year she sends an additional 15,000 bulbs.