Tulips Royalty-Free Stock Image

For its natural and graceful colors and shapes, tulip is one of my most favorite flowers. Although we associate tulips with Holland and windmills, the history of the word takes us on an odyssey to the Middle East, where the tulip is associated with turbans and whence the flower was brought to Europe in the 16th century. The word tulip, which earlier in English appeared in such forms as tulipa or tulipant, comes to us by way of French tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulºpa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend, “muslin, gauze.” (Our word turban, first recorded in English in the 16th century, can also be traced to Ottoman Turkish tülbend.) The Turkish word for gauze, with which turbans can be wrapped, seems to have been used for the flower because a fully opened tulip was thought to resemble a turban.