The Tulip

Description

The Tulip is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has made men mad. Greed, desire, anguish, devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip from a wild flower of the Asian steppes to the world-wide phenomenon it is today. The US alone imports three thousand million tulip bulbs each year, Germany and France even more. Why did the tulip dominate so many lives through so many centuries in so many countries? The author, a self-confessed tulipomaniac, has spent six years looking for answers. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution. Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, the book also features descriptions of eighty wild-species tulips and several hundred garden varieties.

First Sentence

BURIED DEEP in the make-up of the flamboyant, cultivated tulips that fill flower shops in spring, must be the ghostly genes of their wild cousins.

Excerpt

BURIED DEEP in the make-up of the flamboyant, cultivated tulips that fill flower shops in spring, must be the ghostly genes of their wild cousins.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Tulip: The Story of the Flower That Has Made Men MadPaperbackBloomsbury USA2001-02-10
• The tulipBloomsbury1999-01-01
• The TulipHardcoverBloomsbury Publishing PLC1999-01-14
• The TulipHardcoverBloomsbury USA1999-01-15
• TulipHardcoverDiane Pub Co1999-06-01
• The TulipPaperbackBloomsbury Publishing PLC2000-04-17