Meadow saffron - Colchicum autumnale

Each specimen was chosen for its importance as a superb example of the flower's form and characteristics, and each photograph, taken at the peak of the flower's beauty, becomes a stunning portrait. The "story" behind 500 tulips is told as well, from a tulip's parentage to the history of its cultivation and discovery.
Publisher: Artisan (1999-01-10)
Price: $65.00

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 behavior, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution.

The tulip made great fortunes for people but was responsible for equally spectacular bankruptcies. Millions of aficionados now gaze in awe at the brilliant flower pieces painted in the early seventeenth century by masters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert. But at the time they were painted, these works or art were considered as cheap substitutes for the real flowers. Even Jan van Huysum, the grand master of Dutch flower painting, could rarely command more than 5,000 guilders for a painting. But at auction in Alkmaar, Holland in 1637, a single bulb of the red-and-white tulip "Admiral Liefkens' changed hands for 4,400 guilders.

Roaming through Asia, India, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the author tells how the tulip arrived from Turkey and took the whole of Western Europe by storm. In the petals of the exquisite English florists' tulips, still exhibited in competition by members of the Wakefield Tulip Society in Yorkshire, runs the blood of flowers first grown by John Evelyn in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, the book also features descriptions of eighty wild-species tulips and several hundred garden varieties. This beautifully produced and irresistible volume will become a bible, a unique source book, a universal gift book and a joy to all who possess it.Amazon.com Review: In an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than $3.5 million in today's money. Tulipomania had reached its height, and its story is told in just one of the fascinating sections of Anna Pavord's wonderful book on this most seductive of flowers.

Pavord's passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, where she tells of scrambling across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip. The story of the discovery of this tulip leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful, enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the object of affection--in this case, the tulip--from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul in the 18th century to its present cultivation by the Wakefield Tulip Society.

Along the way, incredible stories of people's investments in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of a unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colors are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant but produces its gorgeous hues. The tulipomania that gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colors imaginable. Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects. Buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again. --Jerry Brotton
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (1999-01-15)
Price: $40.00

• four oxen or
  
• twelve sheep or
  
• twenty-four tons of wheat or
  
• two hogsheads of wine or
  
• two tons of butter or
  
• four barrels of beer or
  
• a thousand pounds of cheese or
  
• a silver drinking cup or
  
• an oak bed or
  
• a ship.

Lack of regulation and poor quality control were just a couple of the details that led to the abrupt crash in February 1637. Tulipomania was the original market bust--people were ruined, debts went unpaid. It was a disaster similar to the stock-market crash of 1929. A brief resurrection of the mania occurred 65 years later in Istanbul, and while it was not the financial obsession Holland experienced, it led to the creation of standards in flower shape and increased the development of new types. You don't need to be obsessed to enjoy this book--an interest in tulips, history, and the futures market ensures that this will be a remarkable read. --Jill Lightner
Publisher: Crown (2000-02-29)
Price: $23.00