The search for the darkest cultivar...

Black Tulips. Opulent, mysterious and longed for as fiercely as the one you never had.

In Alexandre Dumas’ Black Tulip, set in Holland during the height of its obsession with tulips in the 1630s, Cornelius van Baerle grows a jet black tulip that makes his neighbour dribble and frame him for great naughtiness. Cornelius is saved from execution at the last minute but imprisoned for life in the fragrant environs of Rosa who unfortunately falls in love with him. There is intrigue, there is betrayal. It is possible that the ending is happy but you can’t have everything.

Other than in sensationalist fiction, however, no one to date has managed to grow a true black tulip. The black tulips sold by discerning florists are usually deep plum, burgundy or mahogany. Still rather wonderful, they absorb the light around them like horticultural pantyliners.

The Queen of the Night tulip is usually thought to be the nearest to the ideal black tulip with large, velvety, deep cocoa-purple flowers on tall stems. The Black Parrot, however, most resembles the teenage goth that pretties our streets with its frilly skirts of black-ruby. And then there’s the Black Diamond, a single late tulip with deep mahogany petals, the Black Hero, a double late tulip in deep wine-red and the Arabian Mystery of rich violet purple with silvery-white at the edges of the petals. All lovely. All gorgeous. All very welcome, should you feel inclined, in a funereal bouquet, but not one of them black. Yet.