Red Tulips

Tulips are indigenous to Central Asia and the name Tulip comes from the Turkish word "Tulbend", which means Turban, as a Tulip was thought to be round. The Tulip is the national flower of Turkey. Tulips are first thought to have come to Europe as a gift from Ogier Ghiselain de Busbecq, the Flemish Ambassador to Turkey in 1590, to his close friend Carolus Clusius, the director of the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, the oldest botanical garden in Europe. The Leiden Botanists began to hybridize the Turkish Tulip into an amazing range of colors in the early 1600s, and a "Tulipmania" followed where wealthy Dutch merchants outbid each other to purchase exotic Tulip bulbs with which to colorize and showcase their gardens. The finest Tulip Bulbs in 1637 were selling for, in today's prices, one million US Dollars each. The spectacular Dutch Tulip price crash of 1637 has given us the modern word "Tulipmania" to describe an asset bubble ready to crash. Dickon Pownall-Gray took this Pink Tulip picture in Essex, Connecticut using a Canon R5 mounted with an RF 70 to 200mm lens at f/8 at 1/600th of a second to stop the action as there was a breeze buffeting the beautiful bank of tulips.