Colours and shapes
Tulips in your home make it feel warmer outside in an instant. Hello spring! You could hardly think of anything more Dutch - but actually the truth is very different. The tulip is an exotic beauty with a rich history involving gold-embroidered turbans and luxurious canalside houses.
Symbolism
If you gave someone a tulip in the 16th century, you were giving them a treasure. In those days the tulip was incredibly popular and a speculative trade in tulip bulbs developed. You could buy a whole canalside house in Amsterdam for the price of one tulip bulb at that time. Just like the rose, every colour of tulip has its own meaning. There’s always something to talk about with tulips.
Origin
Tulips can be found in the wild from North Africa and Southern Europe across to north-west China, with the greatest diversity in three different mountain ranges in Central Asia: the Pamir, the Tian Shan and the Hindu Kush. With cold winters, long springs with cold nights and a dry summer, the climate here is ideal for tulips. Tulips need cold nights and a cold winter in order to be able to grow, as a result of which they cannot be cultivated in a warm climate. Nomads brought the flower to Turkey, where macho sultans wore a tulip in their turban. That's how the flower got its name: 'tulipan' means turban. The rest is history.
