The Tulip
Anna Pavord

The Tulip is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that drove people mad. Greed, desire, suffering, and devotion have all played a role in the tulip’s development from a wild flower of the Asian steppes to the global phenomenon it is today. The United States alone imports three billion tulip bulbs each year, France and Germany even more.
Why did the tulip dominate so many lives in so many countries for so many centuries? The author, an undisguised tulipophile, spent six years searching for answers to that question. No other flower has ever played such a significant role. Pavord charts political upheavals, sheds light on social behavior, and recounts economic booms and busts. Wandering through Asia, India, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, she tells how the tulip arrived from Turkey and took Western Europe by storm.
For some, the tulip laid the foundation for great fortunes, but it was also the cause of equally spectacular bankruptcies. Millions of enthusiasts now gaze in awe at the magnificent flower arrangements painted in the early seventeenth century by masters like Ambrosius Bosschaert. But at the time they were painted, these works of art were considered cheap substitutes for real flowers. Even Jan Huysum, the grand master of Dutch flower painting, could rarely command more than 5,000 guilders for a painting, while at an Alkmaar auction in 1637, a single bulb of the ‘Admirael Liefkens’ tulip changed hands for 4,400 guilders.
The tulip is richly illustrated, including works by Huysum, Bosschaert, and Brueghel. The book also contains descriptions of eighty wild tulip species and hundreds of garden varieties.