Tulips 2012

[fermi de Sousa]

Thank you, Luc and Armin.
Only one new one to add today - Tulipa batalini 'Bronze Charm' - a smaller version of 'Honky Tonk' it seems.
cheers
fermi

[vanozzi]

Those are some great tulips posted.Mine have not done so well this second year at this property, except for some of the species.

Fermi,  I think the label is incorrect on your Tulipa " little beauty"
Regards
Paul R

[David Nicholson]

Smashing collection of Tulips Fermi.

[PeterT]

Fermi, your 'sprengeri' reminds me of vvedenskyi...besides there being different forms, I think that there are a number of hybrids of it around now.... are the bottom leaves of your plants stiff, pointed and flat/horizontal on the ground?

[fermi de Sousa]

Fermi, your 'sprengeri' reminds me of vvedenskyi...besides there being different forms, I think that there are a number of hybrids of it around now.... are the bottom leaves of your plants stiff, pointed and flat/horizontal on the ground?

Thanks, Peter,
this came from Marcus with a note that it's "similar to T. sprengeri but not quite" - I think that a vvedenski hybrid is quite possible - I can't remember what the foliage was like! I don't think they were flat on the ground but that could be because it was a bit crowded.
cheers
fermi                                         

[PeterT]

Some years ago Janis was selling a tulip.... "Tulip sub nom sprengeri".....  More recently I asked him if he knew what it was, and he replied that it was some kind of vvedenskyi hybrid. I cannot remember now if that conversation was on this forum or in a private email.
Perhaps Marcus also bought this tulip?

All the Tulipa vvedenskyi I have have their bottom leaves flat on the ground vey stiff and pointed.
Sprengeri  as I grow it is much more upright, smaller flowerd, less orangey in colour, and laxer leaves, it is also very late flowering.

[Boyed]

Some years ago Janis was selling a tulip.... "Tulip sub nom sprengeri".....  More recently I asked him if he knew what it was, and he replied that it was some kind of vvedenskyi hybrid. I cannot remember now if that conversation was on this forum or in a private email.
Perhaps Marcus also bought this tulip?

Peter,

I grow this sub nom sprengeri. It is not a vvedenskyi hybrid. The scientific research showed its relation to tulipa gesneriana. Taking into account its featurs, I don't think it has anytning common with tulipa vvedenskyi. I attach its photo blooming in my garden. I just call it pseudo-sprengeri.

The vvedenskyi hybrid is the one sold in trade as tulipa alberti.

[FrazerHenderson]

A book review of a book which I'm sure all lovers of tulips will enjoy.....

18. Asirda Lâle [The Tulip in the 18th Century] by Ekrem Hakki Ayverdi

In the 1950s, Ekrem Ayverdi (1899-1984), a noted architectural historian and devotee of Ottoman culture, chanced on an album of tulip paintings in his native Istanbul.

The album, of quarto size, with a contemporary goat-skin and a gilded cover with a bossed, sun motif, contains 49 representations of tulips, one multi-flowered narcissus (a jonquil) and a single, poorly executed red-flowered cyclamen. The first four pictures are mounted on decorative collage pages with the rest on unadorned paper. Forty-four of the tulips are named, of which seven are repeated. The names are in Arabic, Farsi or Turkish, written in Arabic script.

So taken was Ayverdi with the beauty of the album that he resolved to find out more and sought to establish when and by whom the work was produced. By making comparisons with other works and investigating written information, the quality and type of paper and paints he was able to establish that the work was of the 18th century. Further research with reference to known dates by which various tulips and their cultivars had been named enabled him to establish that the work had been produced between 1726 and 1730. Ayverdi noted that the Defter-i Lâlezâr-i Istanbul, the register which gives over one thousand names of tulips grown between 1681-1726, includes 31 of the 37 named in the album, one appearing first in 1725/26. In addition, 24 of the varieties in the album are listed, with their prices, in the Narkh Defteri, the register of the Kadi (the Canon Law judge) of Istanbul for 1726. Since by 1750 the name of only one of the 37 varieties is found in the Risâle-i esami-i Lâle, a treatise on tulip names, Ayverdi concluded that the album dates from circa 1725, when the appreciation of tulips in Istanbul was at its height.

With a small selection of the pictures together with an introductory essay from Ayverdi about his investigations, a pamphlet was published by Kemal Press in the 1950s. It is likely that a book with the full range of illustrations from the album would have been too expensive for an independent publisher to produce. In later years Ayverdi disposed of the album in order to fund the publication of some works on architecture. Through various transactions the album made its way to auction in 1998 when it was sold for Ł111,500. A few years prior to its sale at auction a number of the pictures were reproduced in a book by the Turkish botanist Dr Turhan Baytop entitled Istanbul Lâlesi [The Tulip of Istanbul]. 

In 2006 the original Ayverdi essay together with all the album pictures was reproduced and published by Kubbealti Neşriyâti.  And just as Ayverdi had done so some 60 years earlier I chanced on this facsimile in an Istanbul bookstore and was similarly captivated and beguiled by the exquisite paintings.

The tulips are portrayed in a stylised form reminiscent of Tulipa acuminate.  The leaves are shown, in most representations, as being undulate. The flowers, delicately shaded in soft pink, carmine red, purple, orange, yellow and cream in whole or streaked colours, conform to the criteria required of the tulip in the Mizan'1 Ezhar (The Habit of Flowers), the authoritative treatise on the subject of the cultivation of flowers written in 1703 by Mehmed Lâlezari.

Though the tulips are shown without adornment, the scarlet flowered Nize-i-rummâni (‘the pomegranate –coloured lance’) is presented in an exquisite, cobalt-blue glass vase.  Ayverdi mentions that this tulip was the most expensive and was sold in the early 18th century for a price of seven and a half gold Turkish lira. He also mentions that the Nâib-I Krali (‘the regent’) was exchanged for 2 carts of oats, 4 carts of barley, 4 fat oxen, 12 fat sheep, 8 fat pigs, 2 barrels of wine, 4 barrels of beer, 2 barrels of butter, the equivalent of 50 kilos of cheese, one bedstead, a suit of clothing and a silver vase – and we thought that the apogee of tulipmania was in the Netherlands!

As Ayvedi says in his introductory paragraph “…this graceful blossom [of the tulip] became the sumbol of an entire epoch, and gave its name to an era. The Occidental Turks loved all flowers with unrestrained exuberance. Within the fellowship of Islamic civilization, it was solely the Turks who adopted the flower as an element, creating a distinctive and personal universe of ornamentation in architecture and in tiles. But the passion for tulips so far surpassed the affection for other flowers that it became a world in its own right.”

That affection is clear in the wonderful and evocative names given to many of the tulips in the album: ‘the augmenter of joy’, ‘the heart-breaker’ and ‘the bringer of joy’. But it is not only emotions that are evoked, senses managed to be affected, for it is interesting to note that one of the tulips, a carmine red with a white ground, is given the Arabic name which translates as ‘scented’. And though I stand to be corrected, I am not aware of any current tulip which has scent discernable to human olfactory senses.

If you should be in Istanbul I thoroughly recommend searching for a copy of the book: it is more likely to be found in a book shop rather than the book bazaar. There are a few English language copies available but they are hard to track down. The Turkish version will give equal pleasure. I’m sure that a few hours on the internet may prove fruitful in securing a good second-hand copy and whilst the price for such a copy may seem relatively high it won’t be anywhere near that charged at auction for the original album.