Tulip Legends

The word tulip is thought to be a corruption of the Turkish word for turbans. In the East, the tulips cultivation was started over a thousand years ago.

It grew wild in Persia and near Kabul the Great Mogul Baber counted thirty -three different species. According to Persian legend, the first tulips sprang up from the drops of blood shed by a lover and for
a long time the tulip was the symbol of avowed love. Poets sang its praises and artists drew and painted it so often that when imported to Europe it was considered to be the symbol of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire sent tulip seeds and bulbs to Clusius in Vienna. He was not sure what to do with them so he planted them all in a heap and when they matured , he gave a hundred bulbs to his grocer who also not knowing quite what to do with them fried them and ate them with oil and vinegar. There are people in the world who still eat tulip bulbs of certain varieties. In some parts of Japan a flour is made of them. In times of famine the Dutch have eaten tulip bulbs when no other food was available.Wealthy people began to purchase tulip bulbs that were brought back from Turkey by Venetian merchants. In 1577, Clusius sent to England some tulip bulbs but they did not catch on at that time. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, France began to become interested in tulips. In 1610, fashionable French ladies wore corsages of tulips.