Dan's Papers - June 22, 2007 - An Heirloom Bargain

There are centuries-old antiques you can buy, that you can mail order even, that cost roughly $15 bucks. No eBay scams here - they're the real things. And if the amazing price wasn't incentive enough, these antiques have none of the more tedious, unattractive qualities of old time wares. They emit no musty mildew odors, but rather a sweet, pleasant scent. They never tarnish. They don't need to be rewound, retuned, refinished or reupholstered. Rather, they renew themselves, stronger and brighter each year.

Just watch out for aphids.

They are the easy antiques - antique flowers. They are a cross-section of history in pinks and yellows in a garden. A Victorian lily by the backdoor. Colonial tulips along the porch. 1920s daffodils by the birdbath. Flowers to match the style period of your home.

These antiques are also called heirloom flowers. The heirloom trend started in the 1980s with heirloom tomatoes and antique roses, but has since expanded to a wider array of vegetables and flowers.

It is clear that heirloom plants are growing in popularity, but what exactly are they? Well that is not so clear. What gardeners and botanists are able to agree on is that heirloom flowers are open-pollinated varieties. This means that bees, bugs, hummingbirds or even the wind fertilizes them. Properly saved seeds will produce the same variety year after year. This is quite different from hybrids, which are increasingly popular and more readily available in this age of greenhouses and genetics. But the hybrid cannot sustain itself. Heirloom plants, however, live on generation after generation. With heirlooms, the dahlias your grandmother grew are the same ones you'll get in your garden.

So that's the scientific part. The rest of the heirloom definition gets a bit vague. After all, how old is old enough for an antique? Most gardeners have settled on 50 or more years. Some argue in favor of letting in 48-year-old plants. Some say there must be a good story attached to the flower's history for it to truly be an antique. Of course the further back in history you go, the foggier some stories get.

Yet some stories live on with their blossoms. Take "Beauty of Bath," a tulip with a history to live up to grand name. The aristocratic English tulip grower WT. Ware introduced the flower in 1906. It is a "broken" tulip, meaning not that it is fragile but that its markings bear a broken coloring. Broken variety tulips were all the rage in seventeenth century Holland. In fact, tulips in general were so popular that the country is often said to have suffered from "tulip-mania" during that period. Bulbs sold for huge sums. In 1637, one sold for as much as an Amsterdam house. The demand was such that people bought and sold bulbs that were still in the ground. And of all the varieties, broken tulips were the most prized. Which is odd considering that their unusual color patterns were the result of a virus spread by aphids. Yet the variety was so popular that the twentieth century saw a Dutch revival of the broken style with the development of the similar looking Rembrandt-style. This 400-year-old "broken" love affair is part of the Beauty of Bath's legacy- but only part of it. In addition, the flower may take its title from the hit 1906 musical of the same name. Or it may be a reference to that year's popular apple variety, also called "Beauty of Bath."

Many heirlooms are as rare as they are intriguing. Dahlias, for example, were as popular as the rose when they arrived in North America the 1800s from the Aztec gardens in which they were first domesticated. Yet, of the 10,000 cultivars introduced in the nineteenth century, only three survive today. The famous New Jersey dahlia, introduced in 1923, is now on the endangered bulbs list.

For the true history buff, some heirlooms date much further back. The wild Gladiolus byzantinus, for example, was introduced in 1576. Then it was known as "Turkish flag" or "corn flag of Constantinople." (And you thought "Gladiolus" was a silly name) While the modern-day variety can be overbearing and loud, and arranging the stalks can be like trying to shove a couple of two-by-fours into a vase, this heirloom variety is smaller and more delicate, with a wildflower sweetness.

Among other old favorites is the Campernelle daffodil. Dating back to 1601, it is one of the oldest and most rare daffodils available. And yet you can find this flower in heirloom catalogues for around fifteen bucks for five bulbs. Where else will you find five seventeenth century antiques for the price of three lattes?