The Netherlands is bed for its beautiful and coloured tulip . Though most tulips start from the Ottoman empire , Tulipa sylvestris , the wild tulip , play along a different path . Anastasia Stefanaki and Tinde van Andel , both botanists at Wageningen University and Naturalis Biodiversity Center , and Tilmann Walter , historian at University of Würzburg , attempt to trace back the exact path of this extra tulip .
The waste tulip can come to broadly to a tulip that grow wild , but it is also the vulgar name of Tulipa sylvestris . ‘ We want to get hold out who brought the first Tulipa sylvestris to northern European gardens , when this find , and where the first violent tulip came from ’ , Stefanaki explains . For this , they screened original 16th - century Latin botanic writings , personal mail service correspondences , archives , dry plant collections and illustrations .
Status symbolThe 16th 100 was a " golden age " for botany . flora were no longer seen only as sources of medicine , and an interest in ornamental plant emerged . Having rare and exotic works in your garden was a signal of power . Often , plants were bring as curiosities and precious gifts to noblemen and royalties in the hope to search new , or strengthen existent , links in the in high spirits ranks .
In this context , the tulip was a flower of unprecedented beauty for sixteenth - C Europeans , and everybody desire to have it in their garden . Once in northerly Europe , tulips started to mobilise among botanists and their rich friends with gardens .
The wild tulip‘Unlike the tulip we have in our gardens today , which originate from bulbs that were brought from the Ottoman imperium , the unfounded tulip come from the Mediterranean . The first Tulipa sylvestris bulbs that reached northerly Europe came from Bologna , northerly Italy , and Montpellier , southerly France ’ , Stefanaki tells about their research findings .
Letter from Clusius to CamerariusUnlike garden tulip that come from the Ottoman empire , Tulipa sylvestris did not remain in the garden , it get out and became widely naturalized . Today it farm untamed in much of Europe , as a consequence of its introduction during the sixteenth 100 . This letter from Carolus Clusius – dated 5 December 2024 , Vienna - allow the first evidence of the naturalisation of Tulipa sylvestris . Clusius , the most influential man in tulip history and first director of the Leiden Hortus , send in 1577 several tulip incandescent lamp to his friend Joachim Camerarius in Nurnberg , Germany . In the accompanying letter , Clusius bear on specifically to the tulips from Montpellier and Bologna . This is a clear reference to Tulipa sylvestris , Montpellier and Bologna being the two principal places of origination of Tulipa sylvestris . Clusius says that these tulips should n’t be mix with other tulip and that they should be put apart in the garden and curb with bricks and tiles otherwise they tend to get by and expand to the whole garden .
There were various introductory events of the wild tulip in northern Europe throughout the 2nd one-half of the 16th century , and several famous phytologist were involve . ‘ From there , the tulip went wild . It begin break loose the gardens , producing sidelong young via its runner . Not all flora coinage have this ability to spread by vegetal means . ’
‘ Considering the places of origin of these former bulbs , we realized that dissimilar race of Tulipa sylvestris have been preface to northern Europe ’ , she steer out , ‘ and we should therefore reconsider the presently accepted taxonomy of this metal money . ’ These determination highlight the importance of botanical history in interpret the complex taxonomy of naturalized cultivate plant that have a past of introduction .
Complex taxonomyTheir next research focuses on further investigating the taxonomy of Tulipa sylvestris . ‘ We will do DNA- and morphology analyses of wild tulips amass from historical Dutch gardens and unwarranted localities around Europe , including Italy and France where the first bulb came from ’ , Stefanaki enunciate . ‘ We aim to clarify the complex taxonomy of Tulipa sylvestris which has long been controversial and retrieve out where in Europe this beautiful wild tulip is really aboriginal . ’
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