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From the Jordan
Times weekender, February 28- 2003
by: Ammar Khammash
Tracing the origin of Tulip
Look in natural forests and shrub-land
on the way to Jerash, a good bet would be the old Jerash road. One definite
location is the Aarda road, about 10 km after the gas station at the
exit to Allan. All the hillsides of Zarqa River are good locations for
finding tulips.
Generally Jordan's wild tulip
has bulbs that are deep enough that makes it difficult to uproot when
picking the flower. The best practice, however, is to resist temptation
and train yourself and your company to enjoy wild flowers by leaving
them alive. A good photograph is more valuable, enjoyable and lasting
than a dead wilting flower.
The book "Wild Flowers of
Jordan" by Dawud Al-Eisawi is your best field guide. It is available
at the RSCN's shop at the Jordan River Designs- off rainbow street neat
the first circle.
Before indulging in tulip spotting,
an hour of tulip surfing at the Internet might be very helpful. Don't
postpone seeing wild flowers to "spring" as more than half
of Jordan's wild flowers are already in bloom.
Tulip is an
obsession. There is something special about it, the way its fleshy flowers
and leaves feel is more like living skin than plant.
In the 17th century this flower
lead a popular craze, an epidemic devotion, escalating to a kind of
"tulipomania", that started in Holland and swept most of Europe.
One bulb of a certain variety of tulip would sell, in the 1630s, for
hundreds of thousands fo dollars. Today the global tulip market has
grew to match the national economy of an average size country.
As this plant is not found in
Holland in the wild, could it be that the Dutch tulip tradition has
some long-lost connection to the wild tulips of Jordan?
Historians in Europe trace this
magical bulb to the Ottoman Empire, with great accounts and stories
illustrating the importance of tulip in the Ottoman high civilization.
When looking beyond Turkey, western historians sketch only a hazy image.
Behind the Ottoman Empire; references usually locate the origin of the
flower to remote places between Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. But
why look for the origin of tulip that far, it would have been closer
for the Ottomans to bring the first bulbs from Mount Lebanon, Palestine
or Jordan.
Three known kinds of tulip have
been identified in the wild in Jordan: two kinds with red flower and
one "Desert Tulip" with a whitish flower. The two red ones
are very similar, both species grow in basically the same habitat; "mountains,
and natural forests: Irbid, Ajloun, Jerash, Salt, Amman and Tafileh".
Some flowers of these two species can get closer to orange, specially
on the outer face of the petals, while few are striped with yellowish
lines. From the inside, the flower has a black spot as a base, demarcated
with a yellow borderline. Form these two species of Jordanian red tulip,
"Tulipa agenensis" and "Tulipa stylosa", the first
seems to prefer sandy, well-drained semi-forested hillsides (low lands
around Jerash, and slopes overlooking the Jordan valley) and within
the Mediterranean vegetation habitat at the altitude between sea-level
and up to 700m. above. The second "Tulipa stylosa" seems not
to mind the colder, higher, and snowy lands around Amman, of 700 to
1000 meters in elevation.
The third kind of wild tulip found in Jordan, the Desert Tulip (Tulipa
polychroma) has a slightly smaller flower, elegantly articulated with
more than one color, as its scientific name suggests. The Desert Tulip
also gives, sometimes, more than one flower on a branching stem. Its
color is of beautiful ivory-white with brownish waxy stripes on the
outside, and a ring of bright yellow provides the base of the flower
with an eye-catching charm. The Desert Tulip grows in the highlands
of Shobak, Ras al Naqab, and parts of the eastern desert.
All three kinds of wild tulip
identified in Jordan, so far, have jagged leaves with wavy margins.
When leaves are in good shade, this feature is lost making the waxy
leaves more similar to cultivated tulip found in the market. The feature
of "waves",that gives the leaves the appearance of some aquatic
creature, is an important detail if one attempts to tie Jordan's species
to the Ottoman tulips found decorating Iznik tiles. Both the distinctive
leaves and the pointed flowers, typical of the Ottoman decorative motifs,
make the Jordanian wild tulip a strong possible link in the story of
the origin of this flower.
The old world, the Levant, of
which Jordan represents a central part, has given the new world it's
wheat, and many of its domesticated food-plants. As for flowers, bulbs
sold in the world markets such as tulip, crocuses, daffodils, saffron,
and narcissus, are all found in Jordan in the wild. Other than bulbs,
flowers such as carnation, iris, anemone, and orchid, are also found
as part of Jordan's richly blooming ground-cover.
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