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 A young man's suicide leaves bloody traces. Homoerotic jealousy leads to tragic death. A nubile nymph's passion for a handsome stranger ends in a bizarre revenge slaying. In a tawdry world, innocent love reaps big reward for young working couple.
Headlines ripped from today's tabloid news? No, storylines from the ancient Persians and Greeks used to explain the origin of some of the world's most beautiful flowers: the tulip, hyacinth, narcissus and crocus.
Like many of the popular spring-flowering bulbs that Americans will plant this fall, the tulip, hyacinth, narcissus and crocus are native to the eastern Mediterranean region. Their wild ancestors were known and loved by the Persians, the Ottoman Turks and the Greeks of the Golden Age.
To explain how such beauty came to be, these ancient civilizations — which were ignorant of "modern" science as we know it — used entertaining allegories. Often in conflicting versions.
Some bulb flowers we grow today are identical to their ancient ancestors, others bear faint resemblance, being hybrid products of years of patient nurturing by Dutch and other flower experts. Though most modern plants are larger, stronger and more colorful than their early ancestors, the two share a common thread: a beauty that inspired ancient myths and continues to captivate flower lovers today.
So, as spring-blooming bulbs across the land are planted this fall — put to bed for their winter's sleep — here are some tantalizing "bulb bedtime tales," provided by the International Flower Bulb Center in the Netherlands, a country where such flowers have been celebrated in nearly all the classical arts since their introduction there in 1594.
 A sturdy Persian youth named Farhad, a prince some say, was deeply in love with the fair maid Shirin. One day, word reached him (false word as it tragically turned out) that his beloved had been killed. Gripped by unbearable grief, he mounted his favorite horse and galloped over a cliff to his death. From his numerous wounds droplets of blood trickled onto the ground. From each drop of blood a scarlet tulip sprang, a symbol of his perfect love. So it was that in ancient Persia the red tulip became a symbol of passionate love. The Turks of the Ottoman Empire were the first culture to celebrate the beauty of the tulip and to begin to cultivate and hybridize the flower. The tulip remains the national flower of modern Turkey.
In long-ago times, tulips were symbols of wealth and power. The sultans held great tulip festivals, with multi-colored lanterns, exotic birds and lavish arrangements of exquisite tulips decorating the their royal courtyards.
One sultan spent so much money on his annual tulip festivals that the expenditures were brought out as charges in his impeachment trial. He is the first in recorded history who can truly be said to have "lost his head" over tulips.
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