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in Savoy. It has been suggested that these are survivors of an indigenous European wild tulip that was once linked to its Asiatic cousin by colonies strung across the Balkans. The Savoy tulips, however, have an erratic distribution and are generally found on cultivated land, which suggests that their forebears were planted by people. Then there is a painting, Virgin with Child, showing Mary turning her face to flowers that include garden tulips, which was once attributed to Leonardo da Vinci; but it has now been reassigned to his pupil Melzi, who did not die until 1572. Most remarkably of all, there is a Roman mosaic dating to before A.D. 430 on exhibit in the Vatican Museum that unarguably shows a basket of broad-petaled red tulips. Their arrangement, however, is so evidently eighteenth century in style that it seems the mosaic must have undergone major reconstruction after it was removed from a villa in the suburbs of Rome in the 1700s.

Perhaps the first European to appreciate the beauty of the tulip was Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, the bastard son of a Flemish lord who was for years the most influential Netherlander in the Austrian court. In November 1554 Busbecq went to Istanbul as ambassador of the Holy Roman emperor, and he remained in the Ottoman Empire for almost eight years, making only occasional journeys home. When he did eventually return, he published, in 1581, a book of recollections, written in the form of letters, that described his experiences among the Turks. The letters were packed with intimate and gossipy details and made his name—both in his own day and among historians who still rely on Busbecq to add color to accounts of daily life at the height of Ottoman rule. They also contain his own account of how he first encountered the tulip.

Busbecq was traveling overland from Vienna to Istanbul, and had just left the Thracian city of Adrianople when he first saw the flower growing in the wild. “We set out,” the ambassador wrote in one letter,

on the last stage of our journey to Constantinople, which was now close at hand. As we passed through this district we everywhere came across quantities of flowers—narcissi, hyacinths and tulipans, as the Turks call them. We were surprised to find them flowering in mid-winter, scarcely a favorable season. There is an abundance of narcissi and hyacinths in Greece, and they possess so wonderful a scent that a large quantity of them causes a headache in those who are unaccustomed to such an odour. The tulip has little or no scent, but it is admired for its beauty and the variety of its colors. The Turks are very fond of flowers, and though they are otherwise anything but extravagant, they do not hesitate to pay several aspres* for a fine blossom.

Indeed, Busbecq complained, when he did reach the capital and was presented with some fine tulips by his hosts, “these flowers, although they were gifts, cost me a great deal, for I had to pay several aspres in return for them.” (Another traveler, George Sandys—a son of the archbishop of York—found the Turks equally anxious to press their precious flowers onto strangers at about this time, though he was even less enamored with the gifts than was Busbecq. “You cannot stirre abroad,” the Englishman grumbled, “but you shall be presented by the Dervishes and Janizaries with tulips and trifles.”)

For many years, it was thought that this account of Busbecq’s was contemporary and referred to his initial journey to Istanbul, undertaken during the winter of 1554. More recently, however, it has been shown that all the letters that make up his book were written long after the fact—probably not until the early 1580s, when the tulip had become reasonably well known in Europe—and that the journey he described could not have been his first, made in the depths of winter. Tulips do not flower at that time of year, even in the Ottoman domain; Busbecq therefore must have been misremembering the details of a second journey out to Istanbul, which he undertook when the tulips were in flower—in March 1558.

Given this revision, it is clear that