'Heart's Delight'. Tulipa kaufmanniana, Kaufmann's Tulip, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufmann (1818-1882) was a pillar of the ever expanding Russian Empire of the nineteenth century. A military engineer, he helped reorganise the imperial army, and in 1867 was appointed governor-general of just-conquered Turkestan (a huge area more-or-less covering from East to West parts of Afghanistan, Xinjiang, Kyrgzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan). His seat of government was Tashkent, capital today of Uzbekistan. You'd think that with all that territory to pacify and his plans for administrative organisation and especially land and farm reform, he'd have enough on his mind. But no! Kaufmann was also greatly interested in the natural world of his mandate, so remote from St Petersburg - it took about 2 months of travel for dispatches to arrive. He governed almost independently.
Immediately Kaufmann stimulated naturalist expeditions and institutes in this vast territory. Notable is the one led by Alexei Pavlovitch Fedschenko (1845-1873), a geologist, and his indefatigable wife Olga Alexandrovna Armfeldt ( 1845-1921), a botanist, onward from 1868.
Moreover, he enlisted the services of any promising naturalist or expedition. In 1875 Kaufmann appointed Johann Albert von Regel (see my posting of the day before yesterday) district surgeon to be stationed at Kuldja (Yining), Xinjiang. When Regel and his friends arrived at Tashkent in the early Summer of 1876 (June 21), they were 'enlisted' to study the valleys and mountains east-northeast of the city before traveling on to Xinjiang. And the governor gave them all the help they needed.
Here Regel found our Tulip in the foothills along the Chircik River. It had already blossomed - as his father, the great imperial botanist Eduard August von Regel writes with enthusiansm - but the bulbs were sent north where they flowered in the Spring of 1877. That same year he writes: "It seems to me that this beautiful new tulip is destined to become the matriarch of a novel race of tulips" that will color our gardens. And indeed that's what happened. Here's a 1952 horticultural variety called 'Heart's Delight' in the Amsterdam Hortus. The Elder Regel took care to put into words these botanists' gratitude for the help given the Younger; he named the new Tulip 'Kaufmanniana'.
'Heart's Delight'. Tulipa kaufmanniana, Kaufmann's Tulip, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufmann (1818-1882) was a pillar of the ever expanding Russian Empire of the nineteenth century. A military engineer, he helped reorganise the imperial army, and in 1867 was appointed governor-general of just-conquered Turkestan (a huge area more-or-less covering from East to West parts of Afghanistan, Xinjiang, Kyrgzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan). His seat of government was Tashkent, capital today of Uzbekistan. You'd think that with all that territory to pacify and his plans for administrative organisation and especially land and farm reform, he'd have enough on his mind. But no! Kaufmann was also greatly interested in the natural world of his mandate, so remote from St Petersburg - it took about 2 months of travel for dispatches to arrive. He governed almost independently.
Immediately Kaufmann stimulated naturalist expeditions and institutes in this vast territory. Notable is the one led by Alexei Pavlovitch Fedschenko (1845-1873), a geologist, and his indefatigable wife Olga Alexandrovna Armfeldt ( 1845-1921), a botanist, onward from 1868.
Moreover, he enlisted the services of any promising naturalist or expedition. In 1875 Kaufmann appointed Johann Albert von Regel (see my posting of the day before yesterday) district surgeon to be stationed at Kuldja (Yining), Xinjiang. When Regel and his friends arrived at Tashkent in the early Summer of 1876 (June 21), they were 'enlisted' to study the valleys and mountains east-northeast of the city before traveling on to Xinjiang. And the governor gave them all the help they needed.
Here Regel found our Tulip in the foothills along the Chircik River. It had already blossomed - as his father, the great imperial botanist Eduard August von Regel writes with enthusiansm - but the bulbs were sent north where they flowered in the Spring of 1877. That same year he writes: "It seems to me that this beautiful new tulip is destined to become the matriarch of a novel race of tulips" that will color our gardens. And indeed that's what happened. Here's a 1952 horticultural variety called 'Heart's Delight' in the Amsterdam Hortus. The Elder Regel took care to put into words these botanists' gratitude for the help given the Younger; he named the new Tulip 'Kaufmanniana'.