What Is Flower Fantasy?

The most simple answer is: Flower Paradise on Your Computer!
Flower Fantasy is the only computer program in the world where a unique 3D technology allows you to grow flowers and create wonderful living flower beds right on your computer screen, in full 3D! Whether you want to relax watching beautiful, live flowers from all sides in full 3D and play, or create hundreds of your own, unique 3D flower screensavers with growing flowers in a single mouse click, or make a flower bed design for your garden that shows the entire life cylcle or a flowe bed, Flower Fantasy includes it all! Flower Fantasy is very easy, even for kids. This is a must-have program for anyone who likes flowers.
Read more about Flower Fantasy or see Flower Fantasy Screenshots!

Tulip Plant

Tulip Plant: History

At first, tulips were grown in Persia and Turkey. The tulip came to Europe thanks to Austria’s ambassador to Constantinople, Ogier Ghiselain de Busbecq. In 1554, he brought bulbs of the formerly unknown flower to Vienna, giving them a new name similar to the word “turban”. The tulip’s triumphal progress through the world began at this moment, its eventual fate somewhat reminiscent of a gripping detective novel. Many ruling personages and famous people of the time spent large amounts of money on the purchase and development of new varieties. It was considered a sign of good form and wealth to possess one’s own, unique variety. Among those who revered and loved tulips were Voltaire, Richelieu, and Louis XIV. France’s closest neighbors, the Dutch, decided to profit from this hobby of the French nobility, taking advantage of the flower’s successful adaptation to Holland. From that moment on, the Netherlands were literally overwhelmed by a wave of tulip mania. People quit their jobs and invested their money and their homes in tulip bulbs and the cultivation of new varieties. All strata of society were affected by this mania, from the nobility and bourgeois to sailors and laundrywomen. Luck might smile upon anyone; after all, even one good bulb sale could make you rich beyond your dreams. History has preserved for us the details of sales amounting to as much as 20,000 guilders per bulb. You could buy several homes in the center of town, or an entire ship for this money. In the end, the money turnover in sales exceeded the total worth of the East-Indian Company, the largest colonial monopoly in the world. For this reason, after a short time the entire flower “economy” was shaken by a monstrous crisis, ending the insane tulip fever. But the lesson was not wasted. Holland to this day has remained the arbiter of tulip fashion, earning many millions of euros each year on the export of the bulbs. But other countries held different attitudes toward the tulip. For example, Germans gave this flower a very restrained, even cold reception. They believed that there was nothing behind the beautiful outer shell. Because of this, Germans called an empty beer stein a “tulpe”.

Tulip Plant: Legends, Traditions and Beliefs

In England, many wonderful tales were composed about the tulip. In one of them, tulips were tiny cradles where fairies lay their children at night, giving the flowers bright, new colors in return. There is an old, beautiful legend about this flower. Ages and ages ago happiness was hidden from people in a yellow bud of a tulip, and nothing and no one had the power to open it. But one day a woman with a child walked in the field. The child saw the flower, laughed and ran to the flower and…the bud opened. The child’s laughing did what no other power could do. Since that time tulips are presented only to people who are happy.

Facts about the Tulip Plant

• Contemporary Rembrandt tulips with beautiful flame or feather-like colored petals originate from the species affected by a virus called “mosaic”, which did not kill the population but produced a great variety of unpredictable, fresh color patterns:

• “Black and White”: Deep dark purple flames contrasted with cream-white petals.
  

• “Spaendonck”: red, lavender and rosy purple on cream.

• “Absalon”: sepia and dark brown on gold.

• “Beauty of Bath”: yellow, pink and lavender on white.

• “Silver Standard”: a striking red and white splashed tulip.

• In fact, the first victim of Tulipomania was Turkey. The first outbreak was in 1500’s, when a tulip was more valuable than a human life, and selling or buying bulbs outside of the capital was forbidden and punished by exile (which was the worst at that time).
• There are more than 4000 named varieties of tulips.
• Read more Facts about flowers