Tulip 'Henry Hudson'
I’ve always wondered what the working life of a princess involved. I really think I could do this:
Princess Maxima of the Netherlands, wife of Willem-Alexander, Crown Prince of Orange, baptized Holland’s newest tulip today at a ceremony in Manhattan’s Battery Park. On the site of the fort that once guarded the young colony of New Amsterdam, the Dutch royal couple joined a crowd of New York dignitaries for the official naming ceremony for Tulipa ‘Henry Hudson’ named in honor of the 400th anniversary of explorer Henry Hudson’s discovery of Manhattan Island and the river that bears his name, which led to the founding of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.
I’m sure there’s more involved; parades, formal dinners, ribbon-cuttings and the like. But truly I think I’d be a natural. And I adore orange tulips…by any name. In fact I need to order lots more to fill up my front garden. I’ve decided my days of sampling a bunch of different varieties are over. Six of this apricot… twelve of this coral… six more peachy-pink. No – I want orange and I want lots!!!
Today’s ceremony was part of NY400, a joint Dutch-American celebration of the shared history of New York City and the City of Amsterdam. The royal couple also presented the City of New York with a gift of 120,000 flower bulbs to be planted in the city’s five boroughs, Battery Park and the Hudson River Park this fall. Accepting the gifts were Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City; Adrian Benepe, parks commissioner; Diana Taylor, chairwoman of the Hudson River Park Trust; William Rudin, chairman of the board of the Battery Conservancy; and Warrie Price, founder and president of the Battery Park Conservancy.
Yeah, I think 120,000 bulbs might just do it! Tulipa vvedenskyi ‘Henry Hudson’ is a beautiful orange flamed species tulip with characteristic and lively prostrate wavy foliage. If you can find a tulip with attractive foliage – buy it you won’t be sorry. While the photo above may indicate otherwise, this little darling tops out between 8-12″. A companionable plant, especially when established in good numbers, that makes a graceful exit after blooming as the foliage fades.
For those of us needing a quick brush up on history:
Henry Hudson was the English captain hired to helm the Dutch East India Company ship Halve Maen (Half Moon) on an expedition to search out a new passage to the Orient. In the fall of 1609 he sailed into New York harbor where he landed on Manhattan Island, and then traveled up the Hudson as far as present-day Albany. His explorations established a Dutch claim to the area and paved the way for their colonization of southern New York as the colony of New Amsterdam. On a subsequent voyage in 1610 in the ship Discovery, Hudson explored the coast of Greenland and discovered the Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada, the second largest bay in the world after the Bay of Bengal.
Tulip ‘Henry Hudson’ was bred by The Institute of Horticultural Plant Breeding (IVT) in Wageningen, the Netherlands. The bulbs were grown by grower Piet Apeldoorn, of Th. Apeldoorn, Egmond-Binnen, the Netherlands.
