A spring-flowering bulb of the central Asian steppes whose introduction to seventeenth-century Holland triggered the first speculative bubble in modern finance.
Where it grows
Wild tulip species grow naturally from Anatolia across the Pontic and Caspian steppes into the Tian Shan and Pamir mountains. Cultivated tulips need a cold winter to set flower buds and a dry summer dormancy, conditions met by the Dutch polders, Turkish highlands, and parts of the American Pacific Northwest where commercial bulb fields thrive.
How to recognise it
Each bulb sends up two or three broad grey-green leaves and a single smooth flower stem. The classic tulip flower has six tepals — three petals and three petal-like sepals — forming a goblet that opens flat in sun. Parrot, fringed, lily-flowered, and Rembrandt forms break this shape in cultivation.
Garden & cultural uses
The Netherlands now exports over two billion tulip bulbs a year. In Turkey the flower is the floral emblem of Istanbul and the Ottoman Tulip Era of the early 1700s; Iran’s flag carries a stylised tulip.
In history
The 1637 collapse of “tulip mania” — when bulbs of broken-coloured Semper Augustus traded for the price of an Amsterdam canal house — is still cited in every textbook on financial bubbles.
Find more flowers by letter
Tulip starts with T and ends with P. Browse other flowers along the same letter.
Flowers that contain a letter from "Tulip":