March
1, 2002
Flower
Show to Feature "World's Most Coveted Flower"
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Photo: Fred Leblanc
Sarah Avalon '03 prepares for
"Tulipomania."
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It looks like an
onion: a small, brown, teardrop-shaped package, creamy white on
the inside with a paper-brown cover. Like the onion, it is edible.
But there ends the tulip bulb's resemblance to the homely, utilitarian
vegetable. Tulips have been used as protective talismans in war
and tokens of fiery love, and—in a bizarre chapter of botanical
history labeled "tulipomania"—tulips have made
fortunes and broken them. Bringing the tulip, its botany, and
its history to center stage, MHC's annual flower show, this year
titled "Tulipomania," will take place daily from March
2 to 17, from 10 am to 4 pm at the Talcott Greenhouse.
"This winter,
when we were trying to come up with a theme for the annual flower
show," says Ellen Shukis, director of Mount Holyoke's Botanic
Gardens and Talcott Greenhouse, "I happened to read the book
Tulipomania. It's fascinating how tulips were traded like stocks,
how absurd the prices got, and why the tulip market crashed. It
just clicked: tulips!"
Each October, the
staff and student workers at the Talcott Greenhouse begin the
labor of potting up nearly five thousand bulbs for the following
spring's show. "It's a really big job," says Kate Fitzpatrick
'02, who nevertheless loves working at the greenhouse. "It's
the greatest atmosphere ever," says the neuroscience major.
"It always smells good and the staff are great to work with."
Fitzpatrick and the others spend hours nesting bulbs in rich humus
and stashing them away under the greenhouse office in a walk-in
cooler. There in the dark, the bulbs—tulip, narcissus, hyacinth,
daffodil, crocus, and more—may look as though they're sound
asleep, but below the surface of the soil, they are hard at work
building the plants' root systems. Three to four months later,
it's wake-up time. Greenhouse staff haul out the pots, placing
them first in a cool, shady spot for "hardening off,"
later moving them into warm, sunny areas of the greenhouse. Within
a day or two of the move, a tiny reddish-green spike pokes through
the soil. From that spike will emerge leaves, then, finally, a
bloom.
It was those magnificent
blooms that precipitated one of the strangest tales in economic
history. In Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted
Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused (1999), British
writer Mike Dash tells the story of the arrival of tulips in Holland
via Turkey in the sixteenth century, and the eventual flowering
of the tulip trade. At its height in 1637, buyers have paid more
than five thousand guilders for a single, rare tulip bulb—a
sum equal to the typical annual earnings of a well-off Dutch merchant
of the period. Dash writes of the city of Hoorn, one of the centers
of trading: "Somewhere in the center of this ruined town,
in the first half of the seventeenth century, stood a house with
three stone tulips carved into its façade. […] The
stone flowers were placed there to commemorate the sale of the
house, in the summer of 1633, for three rare tulips. It was in
this year, according to the chronicle of a local historian named
Theodorus Velius, that the price of bulbs reached unprecedented
heights in West Friesland.
While people don't
sell a house for a sack of bulbs these days, the tulip is still
prized for its luminous beauty. And this year's flower show promises
a veritable pageant.
Representatives from
each of the fifteen horticultural, or esthetic, divisions of the
genus Tulipa—within which there are thousands of varieties—will
be on show. T. fancy frills has large butter-yellow petals
with a pink blush and fringed tips that resemble crystals. A soft,
rosy-pink "double" tulip, T. angelique has at
least twice the number of petals of a "single," giving
it a peony-like appearance. "It's very romantic," says
Shukis. T. apricot beauty puts out a single salmon-colored
bloom with apricot flushes and is known for its sweet fragrance.
Before the petals
stage their show, the plants are busy laying the groundwork. In
mid-February at the Talcott Greenhouse, the leaves of the "forced"
tulips unfurl. (Forced bulbs get tricked into blooming early by
receiving their cold treatment in advance of winter.) This stage—before
the blooms come along and steal the show—is a good time to
appreciate the tulip's wide variety of foliage. A bright pink
line trims the leaves of T. Easter Moon. Several varieties, such
as T. Don Quixote, have a purple tinge to the leaves. Other tulip
types have mottled foliage, like T. Red Riding Hood, which will
bring forth a bright red flower.
While there is much
more to the flower show than blooms, at bottom, says Shukis, "It's
always about flowers. At this time of year, that's what people
want to see." This year will be no exception, with the showy
tulip in center ring, but "Tulipomania" will be catering
to heads as well as hearts. Along with the show of flowers will
be displays on the history and botany of the tulip. "For
example," says Shukis, "structurally, a tulip bulb is
mostly leaf, and it plays a similar role, storing food and water."
Bulbs, she notes, harbor a scaled-down version of the flower-to-be.
Dissect a tulip bulb and you'll find at its center a pale, fully
formed flower.
While tulips, inside
and out, are the stars this year, many of the annual favorites
will appear in supporting roles: fuzzy-leafed cineraria sporting
bright, daisylike blooms; white and blue anemones; hyacinths;
narcissus; and daffodils; crocuses from pale violet to amethyst
to golden yellow; white and sky-blue scilla; fritillaria; muscari;
and primrose.
As part of the flower
show, Bill Cullina will present a slide lecture titled "Fifty
Great Natives for the Northeast," Wednesday, March 6, at
7 pm in Gamble Auditorium. He will share his knowledge of native
plants, highlighting some of the best for New England gardens.
Cullina is the nursery manager and propagator at the New England
Wildflower Society's Garden in the Woods, in Framingham, Massachusetts,
and author of The New England Wild Flower Society Guide to
Growing and Propagating Wildflowers of the United States and Canada
(2000). A reception in the illuminated Talcott Greenhouse will
follow.
To learn more about
the show and lecture, call x2116 or visit www.mtholyoke.edu/go/botanic.
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