Month: May 2012

I mowed the lawn for the first time last weekend.

This mundane task was made much easier by these beauties, smiling over me.

I believe the variety is called “Jet fire” which seems highly appropriate. I had never really appreciated tulips until a few years ago when we planted some “queen of the night” – dramatic dark purple flowers that really caught your attention, especially when combined with vivid orange tulips; the glaucous foliage of both setting off the combination beautifully.

Then a few trips to Holland happened, I visited the famous Keukenhof gardens and the bollenstreek. and I learned to love the tulip. Eventually when I got married I even had yellow tulips in my bouquet (though mainly because they were in season and I wanted to have locally grown flowers).

This year we also have this variety in a pot, though I’m not sure what they are called.

Their bright colours really make a difference after the long dark winter and I am so happy to see them come up again – still glorious even in a second year. More than any other spring flower, tulips for me embody the transition from winter to spring to summer.

As I had my camera out in the garden I could not resist taking a few more photos. The internal parts of the tulip are extraordinary in close up. The stamen with the fine powder pollen on the anthers, surrounding the pistil and the deep black of the central petals have always reminded me of big dramatic bumble bees.

It is not surprising to me that Elizabeth Blackadder, has chosen red and yellow tulips for some of her most dramatic flower paintings. They simply sparkle with life and vitality. They flower themselves to exhaustion after a couple of years, often requiring 5 years or more to come back to flowering. Truly a passionate plant.

And yet, the frilling and streaking of the tulip petals is actually caused by a virus. This must be a rare case of a pathogen enhancing natural beauty. I had assumed that these were a modern variation added by skillful breeders but on a recent trip through Schiphol airport in Amsterdam I had the opportunity to visit the Rijksmuseum’s Dutch Flowers exhibition. There, in one of the first paintings I looked at from the 17th century was a tulip beautifully streaked with colours.

I had seen Dutch flower paintings before, having been inspired to look up a few after reading The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift (a beautiful book, a meditation on time passing and the natural world but touching on many subjects). However, I had never appreciated how vividly beautiful such paintings were until seeing them in reality.

Unfortunately, the mosaic virus that causes such beautiful patterning weakens the bulbs through the generations to such an extent that eventually they no longer reproduce, and many of the original varieties from the 17th century no longer exist other than in oil paintings.

Note: I haven’t written anything on this blog for a long time for which I apologise – a combination of too little time due to work/family commitments and a lack of inspiration, but I have good intentions at least to continue posting here items that interest me semi-regularly over the summertime. Thanks for reading. 

Note: I have also had to change my web address to sternaparadisaea.net since my .com domain expired this year and, due to illness I did not renew it in time.