Tulip
Tulips (Tulipa) form
a genus of
spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes (having
bulbs as storage organs). The flowers are usually large, showy, and brightly
colored, generally red, pink, yellow, or white (usually in warm colors). They
often have a different colored blotch at the base of
the tepals (petals and sepals, collectively), internally. Because of
a degree of variability within the populations, and a long history of
cultivation, classification has been complex and controversial. The tulip is a
member of the lily family, Liliaceae, along with 14 other genera,
where it is most closely related to Amana, Erythronium, and Gagea in
the tribe Liliaceae. There are about 75 species, and these are divided
into four subgenera. The name "tulip" is thought to be derived
from a Persian word for turban, which it may have been thought
to resemble. Tulips originally were found in a band stretching from Southern
Europe to Central Asia, but since the seventeenth century have become
widely naturalized and cultivated (see map). In their natural
state, they are adapted to steppes and mountainous areas
with temperate climates. Flowering in the spring, they become dormant in
the summer once the flowers and leaves die back, emerging above ground as a
shoot from the underground bulb in early spring.
Originally growing wild in the valleys of the Tian
Shan Mountains, tulips were cultivated in Constantinople as early as 1055.
By the 15th century, tulips were among the most prized flowers; becoming the
symbol of the Ottomans. While tulips had probably been cultivated in
Persia from the tenth century, they did not come to the attention of the West
until the sixteenth century, when Western diplomats to
the Ottoman court observed and reported on them. They were rapidly
introduced into Europe and became a frenzied commodity during Tulipmania.
Tulips were frequently depicted in Dutch Golden Age paintings, and have
become associated with the Netherlands, the major producer for world markets,
ever since. In the seventeenth century Netherlands, during the time of the
Tulipmania, an infection of tulip bulbs by the tulip breaking
virus created variegated patterns in the tulip flowers that were
much admired and valued. While truly broken tulips do not exist anymore, the closest
available specimens today are part of the group known as the Rembrandts – so
named because Rembrandt painted some of the most admired breaks of
his time.
Breeding programs have produced thousands
of hybrid and cultivars in addition to the original species
(known in horticulture as botanical tulips). They are popular
throughout the world, both as ornamental garden plants and
as cut flowers.
Description
Tulipa (tulips) is a genus of
spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes,
dying back after flowering to an underground storage bulb. Depending on the
species, tulip plants can be between 10 and 70 cm (4 and 28 inches) high.
Flowers: The tulip's flowers are usually large and
are actinomorphic (radially symmetric)
and hermaphrodite (contain both male (androecium) and female
(gynoecium) characteristics), generally erect, or more rarely pendulous,
and are arranged more usually as a single terminal flower, or
when purifier as two to three (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica),
but up to four, flowers on the end of
a floriferous stem (scape), which is single arising from amongst
the basal leaf rosette. In structure, the flower is generally cup or star-shaped. As with other members of Liliaceae, the perianth is
undifferentiated (perigonium) and biseriate (two whorled), formed from six
free (i.e. apotepalous) caducous tepals arranged into two
separate whorls of three parts (trimerous) each. The two whorls represent
three petals and three sepals but are termed tepals because
they are nearly identical. The tepals are usually petaloid (petal-like), being
brightly colored, but each whorl may be different, or have different colored
blotches at their bases, forming darker coloration on the interior surface.
The inner petals have a small, delicate cleft at the top, while the sturdier
outer ones form uninterrupted ovals.
Androecium: The flowers have six distinct,
basifixed introrse stamens arranged in two whorls of three,
which vary in length and may be glabrous or hairy. The filaments are shorter
than the tepals and dilated towards their base.
Gynoecium: The style is short or absent and each stigma has
three distinct lobes and the ovaries are superior, with three
chambers.
Fruit: The tulip's fruit is a globose or ellipsoid
capsule with a leathery covering and an ellipsoid to globe shape. Each
capsule contains numerous flat, disc-shaped seeds in two rows per
chamber. These light to dark brown seeds have very thin seed coats
and endosperm that do not normally fill the entire seed.
Leaves: Tulip stems have few leaves. Larger species tend to have
multiple leaves. Plants typically have two to six leaves, some species up to
12. The tulip's leaf is cauline (born on a stem), strap-shaped, with
a waxy coating, and the leaves are alternate (alternately arranged on the
stem), diminishing in size the further up the stem. These fleshy blades are
often bluish-green in color. The bulbs are truncated basally and elongated
towards the apex. They are covered by a protective tunic (tunicate) which can
be glabrous or hairy inside.
Colors
The "Semper Augustus" was the most expensive tulip during the
17th-century tulip mania. “The color is white, with Carmine on a blue
base, and with an unbroken flame right to the top” – wrote Nicolas van
Wassenaer in 1624 after seeing the tulip in the garden of one Dr. Adriaen Pauw,
a director of the new East India Company. With limited specimens in
existence at the time and most owned by Pauw, his refusal to sell any flowers,
despite wildly escalating offers, is believed by some to have sparked the
mania.
Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue
(several tulips with "blue" in the name have a faint violet hue), and
have absent nectaries. Tulip flowers are generally bereft of scent
and are the coolest of floral characters. The Dutch regarded this lack of scent
as a virtue, as it demonstrates the flower's chasteness.
While tulips can be bred to display a wide variety of colors, black
tulips have historically been difficult to achieve. The Queen of the Night
tulip is as close to black as a flower gets, though it is, in fact, a dark and
glossy maroonish purple - nonetheless, an effect prized by the Dutch. The
first truly black tulip was bred in 1986 by a Dutch flower grower in
Bovenkarspel, Netherlands. The specimen was created by cross-breeding two deep
purple tulips, the Queen of the Night and Wienerwald tulips.
No comments:
Post a Comment