Tulipomania - Mike Dash [26]
The most favored tulips were those that exhibited the most perfect petals and the most eye-catching markings. Indeed, Dutch cultivars of the Golden Age were celebrated and valued far beyond the borders of the republic for the elaborate and often riotous colors they exhibited. By the middle 1630s no fewer than thirteen groups of flowers had been created, each with its own distinctive color scheme. These ranged from the Couleren, which were simple, single-colored tulips in red or yellow or white, to the rare Marquetrinen—late-flowering varieties that exhibited at least four colors. The Couleren would have been botanical tulips, or at least cultivars closely related to them, while Marquetrinen tulips must have been fairly complex hybrids. The latter were grown mostly in Flanders and France and do not figure in the records of the tulip mania.
In the Dutch Republic the most popular of the thirteen groups were the Rosen, the Violetten, and the Bizarden. Rosen varieties, which were by far the most numerous, were colored red or pink on a white ground. During the first third of the seventeenth century, almost four hundred Rosen tulips were created and named. The seventy or so Violetten, as their name suggests, were purple or lilac on white, and the Bizarden, which on the whole were the least favored of the three and existed in only two dozen varieties, were colored red, purple, or brown on yellow. Varieties that reversed the usual color schemes also existed and were generally classed with them; for example, Lacken tulips were purple flowers with a broad white border and were grouped with the Violetten, while the handful of Ducken cultivars, which were red with a yellow border, could be found among the Bizarden.
It was the patterns that these contrasting colors formed that really excited gardeners, and it is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how different tulip cultivars were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the seventeenth century. The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated that those of ordinary plants; mere red became bright scarlet, and dull purple a bewitching shade of almost-black. They were also brilliantly defined, quite unlike the indefinite flushing displayed by other multicolored flowers as their petals shaded gradually from one color to another.
The distinguishing colors of Dutch tulip cultivars—the reds of Rosen tulips and the purples of the Violetten—generally appeared as feathers or flames that ran up the center of each petal and sometimes also formed a border around its edges. These colors occasionally also appeared as mottled patches on the plant’s stem, though they never tainted the purity of the flower’s base, which was always either white (sometimes tinged with blue) or yellow, depending upon the variety. The patterns were unique to each flower, and though two plants of the same variety might closely resemble each other, they were never absolutely identical.
From the earliest days of the bulb craze, Dutch tulipophiles used the subtle variations of these flames and flares of color to grade their flowers according to a strict set of criteria. The most highly prized tulips, termed “superbly fine,” were broken varieties that were almost entirely white or yellow in color, displaying their flames of violet, red, or brown only in thin stripes that ran along the center and the edges of their petals. Flowers that in the opinion of the connoisseurs flaunted their bright colors too wantonly were termed “rude” and were much less cherished.
Botanical tulips are noted for their robust and simple color schemes, so how did the celebrated