EBOOK
About
"Delightful…Next time you are lucky enough to be someone's houseguest, consider arriving with a bouquet of either one of the Little Book of Flowers."
-The New York Times
"In 'A Little Book of Flowers,' a new series of single bloom titles, author Tara Austen Weaver weaves together basic botany and culture. Each posey-size volume reads like a very smart love letter to cultivating beauty. . . Charming illustrations by Emily Poole and numerous quotes tug at our horticultural heartstrings, while a serviceable glossary and resource section at the back of each book indulge our yearning to grow more flowers and deepen our knowledge of the natural world."
-Seattle Times, Pacific NW Magazine ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
"The tulip is a flower that draws some of the most exquisite lines in natures and then, in spasms of extravagance, blithely oversteps them." --Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
"Tulips were a tray of jewels," wrote E. M. Forster in his novel Howards End, and the gem comparison is an apt one. After a drab winter, tulips sally forth with their long stems and oval-shaped buds opening to blooms all colors of the rainbow--from deep scarlet and purple, to the Easter egg pastels of pink, lavender, and pale yellow. Tulips come striped, painted in contrasting colors, or rimmed in white or gold. Swaying, as they do, above the new growth of a spring garden, tulips are a symbol of rebirth, as colorful and triumphant as a flower could be.
The story of tulips weaves through political and economic history like few other flowers. These humble bulbs we tuck into garden beds have been gifted by sultans and queens, they have been celebrated, stolen, carried across oceans and plai[ns; at times they have been considered as precious as rubies. Happily for us, these days they are affordable luxuries--and easy to grow as well. More than anything else, tulips are a gift we give ourselves. The bulbs we plant each year are an act of hope that has played out for centuries--the hope that this small autumnal effort will yield great beauty come spring.
Modern-day tulips trace their roots to a swath of territory stretching from the Mediterranean across Central Asia and up into the Tian Shan mountain range. Tulips have been able to thrive in climates with cold winters and hot, dry summers, as their bulbs allow the plant to go dormant and store energy for the next spring. While the wild species are shorter and smaller than our modern-day tulip hybrids, they share the same six petals and elongated gray-green foliage recognized throughout the world.
The earliest known physical record of tulips dates to illustrations in a twelfth-century bible, where the text is embellished with images of the flowers. Tulips were certainly cultivated before that time, but the history has been lost. Mention of the flowers do show up in several versions of ancient legend, however. In one, a Persian youth is so heartbroken over the loss of his beloved that he mounts a favorite horse and rides it at full speed off the edge of a cliff to his death. It is said that red tulips sprouted from the ground that was soaked in his blood. Another story tells of a lovelorn young man rejected by his sweetheart, who cries with the pain of heartbreak. Where his tears fall to the ground, tulips grow. For generations now, tulips have been a symbol of great love.
Tulips also feature in early Persian poetry, written during the Islamic Golden Age (eighth to thirteenth centuries). "In the flaming light of the morning sky," wrote Omar Khayyam (1048 to 1131), a scholar, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet, "the wine in your cup looks like a tulip in spring." Another poem, by the theologian, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 to 1273)--more commonly known today as Rumi--also refers to the flowers:
"December and January, gone.
Tulips coming up."
It was in sixteent
-The New York Times
"In 'A Little Book of Flowers,' a new series of single bloom titles, author Tara Austen Weaver weaves together basic botany and culture. Each posey-size volume reads like a very smart love letter to cultivating beauty. . . Charming illustrations by Emily Poole and numerous quotes tug at our horticultural heartstrings, while a serviceable glossary and resource section at the back of each book indulge our yearning to grow more flowers and deepen our knowledge of the natural world."
-Seattle Times, Pacific NW Magazine ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
"The tulip is a flower that draws some of the most exquisite lines in natures and then, in spasms of extravagance, blithely oversteps them." --Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
"Tulips were a tray of jewels," wrote E. M. Forster in his novel Howards End, and the gem comparison is an apt one. After a drab winter, tulips sally forth with their long stems and oval-shaped buds opening to blooms all colors of the rainbow--from deep scarlet and purple, to the Easter egg pastels of pink, lavender, and pale yellow. Tulips come striped, painted in contrasting colors, or rimmed in white or gold. Swaying, as they do, above the new growth of a spring garden, tulips are a symbol of rebirth, as colorful and triumphant as a flower could be.
The story of tulips weaves through political and economic history like few other flowers. These humble bulbs we tuck into garden beds have been gifted by sultans and queens, they have been celebrated, stolen, carried across oceans and plai[ns; at times they have been considered as precious as rubies. Happily for us, these days they are affordable luxuries--and easy to grow as well. More than anything else, tulips are a gift we give ourselves. The bulbs we plant each year are an act of hope that has played out for centuries--the hope that this small autumnal effort will yield great beauty come spring.
Modern-day tulips trace their roots to a swath of territory stretching from the Mediterranean across Central Asia and up into the Tian Shan mountain range. Tulips have been able to thrive in climates with cold winters and hot, dry summers, as their bulbs allow the plant to go dormant and store energy for the next spring. While the wild species are shorter and smaller than our modern-day tulip hybrids, they share the same six petals and elongated gray-green foliage recognized throughout the world.
The earliest known physical record of tulips dates to illustrations in a twelfth-century bible, where the text is embellished with images of the flowers. Tulips were certainly cultivated before that time, but the history has been lost. Mention of the flowers do show up in several versions of ancient legend, however. In one, a Persian youth is so heartbroken over the loss of his beloved that he mounts a favorite horse and rides it at full speed off the edge of a cliff to his death. It is said that red tulips sprouted from the ground that was soaked in his blood. Another story tells of a lovelorn young man rejected by his sweetheart, who cries with the pain of heartbreak. Where his tears fall to the ground, tulips grow. For generations now, tulips have been a symbol of great love.
Tulips also feature in early Persian poetry, written during the Islamic Golden Age (eighth to thirteenth centuries). "In the flaming light of the morning sky," wrote Omar Khayyam (1048 to 1131), a scholar, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet, "the wine in your cup looks like a tulip in spring." Another poem, by the theologian, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 to 1273)--more commonly known today as Rumi--also refers to the flowers:
"December and January, gone.
Tulips coming up."
It was in sixteent