Quick random information and some craft on plants for Gr 3-4 - Tulips

image source

Look at this picture.  What do you feel when you look at it?  Is it not just too pretty for words? These are all flowers called tulips.  Even though they did not originally come from Holland, they are now mostly grown there.

Lets learn more about these beautiful flowers.

The word tulip is derived from a Persian word called delband, which means turban. It is generally believed that it was called this due to the turban-shaped nature of the flower. However, this might have been a translation error as it was fashionable to wear tulips on turbans at the time. 

There are more than 300 species of tulips.  They bloom in Spring and they live for more than 2 years before new bulbs must be planted - this means they are called 'perennials'.  They bloom once a year for only 3-7 days at a time.

Tulips grow from bulbs and these plants originated in cold mountainous areas, so it needs the cold in order to bloom well in Spring.  The bulb will be planted during Autumn and after a cold winter, it will start germinating (growing).

These flowers smell great and they can grow from a few inches hight to over a few feet, depending on the type of tulip.  Most tulips are one flower on a stem, but there are types where there can be up to 4 flowers on a stem.

Tulips are part of the lily family.  It originally came from central Asia and then made its way to Turkey, but it was when it started being planted in the Netherlands that people truly realised how beautiful these flowers are.

When the rest of the world saw how beautiful and perfect this flower is, the tulips became very expensive and this started something called the 'tulip frenzy'.  This happened between 1634 and 1637 and it became so expensive that in some countries it were treated as currency.

At the peak of tulip mania certain bulbs were selling for 10 times more than the annual income of a skilled worker and a valuable tulip bulb could change hands up to ten times in a day. Tulip mania was short-lived though and the whole economy eventually crashed. 

Today the Netherlands are still the country that grows and exports the most tulips and they deliver up to 3 billion bulbs per year which are mostly exported (send to other countries).

The petals of the tulip can be eaten and a lot of people did this when there was a shortage of food during WWII in 1944.

We cannot all have tulips in our garden or home, but we can make some tulips from paper.  Watch the video and try it yourself.