Growing spring bulbs in
Wyoming is easy. They love our cool
springs and dry summers and are one of the most xeric and hardy plants in the
landscape! Now is the time to plant
these gems for early to mid spring flower power. Most want to be planted four to six inches deep into the soil
with the tip end pointed to the sky.
One can literally choose from tens of thousands of different cultivars
and hybrids, just be sure they are USDA hardiness zone 4 or lower.
To see beautiful photos and descriptions of more than a dozen of our favorites, Click Here.
But this article isn’t about
growing bulbs, it’s about their unique place in the world’s history of
civilization, I already mentioned they are easy for Wyomingites to grow.
Let’s look at tulips. Holland is the world’s undisputed king in
tulip bulb production. Each year
growers from Holland offer nine billion bulbs to the world’s market - nine billion! Holland is famous for tulipomania. Way before the dot.com bubble, the housing
bubble, or the financial bubble the rich in Holland created the tulip bubble
that got started in the early 1600’s.
By 1624, one particular tulip with 12 known bulbs was selling for $1,500
a piece in today’s dollars. Today, a
similar bulb can be purchased for under a buck – including shipping and
handling – the bubble burst. Just like
today, fortunes were lost in a blink of the eye.
Tulips didn’t originate in
Holland they were introduced. Native to
the steppe country of Asia Minor – think Turkey and the surrounding area, it
was the Ottoman Empire of Turkey that first started cultivating tulips around
1,000 AD. It was the Turks who
introduced tulips to Holland.
The Garden of Europe,
otherwise known as Kuekenhof, in Lisse, Holland is a seventy acre garden that
hosts over one million people a year to see the seven million bulbs in spring
bloom. If you’re like me, and can’t
afford a trip to see this garden, Click Here to go to their website and be prepared to be wowed.
Narcissus, Daffodil or
Jonquil, which is the right name for this bulb? Well, all three is right!
Daffodil is the common name, Narcissus is the genus name and jonquil is
the specie name, so whether you call them by their common name their genus or
specie name they are all the same plant – I’ll call them Daffodils. Native to the uplands of Spain, Portugal and
Turkey, Daffodils were first written about by Mohammad in the sixth century AD. Daffodils are a part of Greek
Mythology. As the myth has it, a young
handsome lad named Narcissus was infatuated with himself, when getting a drink
in a pond he looked upon himself in the pool.
He couldn’t stop admiring himself and slowly died. The Greek God Zeus took pity on him and
turned his body into a flower that every spring blooms.
Even in this country, with
our expansion to the West, daffodils were a ‘must have’ for the long trip in
covered wagons. It was a way to bring
beauty to the frontier garden.
So this autumn, plant bulbs
and a world of history will be at your footstep come spring.
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