For centuries, hyacinths have filled the spring air with sweet perfume, inspired poets to songs of praise and gardeners to feats of horticultural elegance.
In the mid-18th century, Madame de Pompadour -- mistress of France's King Louis XV -- ordered the gardens of Versailles filled with Dutch Hyacinths and had hundreds forced "on glasses" inside the palace in winter. The predominant fashion trend-setter of her age, the royal paramour's passion for these sweetly-scented Dutch bulb flowers sparked a national rage among the French elite.
Today, the hyacinth remains a symbol of style and elegance, with the grand tradition of large formal beds planted with hyacinths carried on in many of the world's great public and private gardens.
But the lush hyacinth varieties that so enthused Madame de Pompadour and those which give us such pleasure today, are a far cry from the hyacinth which first caught the attention of our ancestors.
Hyacinths, it is believed, were first cultivated in Europe by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Both Homer and Virgil described the plant's fragrance. The hyacinth known to these men would have been Hyacinthus orientalis, a native of Turkey and the Middle East and the genetic ancestor of our modern cultivars.
This early hyacinth was a rather wan looking specimen. With only about 15 pale blue flowers in a loose raceme, or group of single flowers arranged along a central axis, on ten-inch stems, these plants were valued mainly for their scent.
Whether due to their anemic appearance or other factors, the cultivation of hyacinths faded from Europe about the same time as the Romans did.
The plant reentered European gardens in the 1560's, reintroduced from Turkey and Iran, eventually reaching the bulb-loving low countries of Holland.
It was there that the tiny Hyacinthus orientalis experienced a centuries-long "fashion make-over," as skillful Dutch hybridizers transformed it into a full-flowered garden gem, earning the plant its popular name: the Dutch Hyacinth.
Botanists at one time included about thirty species under the genus Hyacinthus. Botanical reorganizations over the years have moved most of these plants into other genera, leaving only three in the original family, of which only H. orientalis (with the exception of Hyacinthus orientalis albulus, a species strain native to southern France now hardly ever grown) has garden-worthy offspring.
All hyacinths found in the modern garden are cultivars, or manmade hybrids. Though the original species can still be found in nature along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, it is no longer in cultivation or trade.
The modern Dutch Hyacinth is a decidedly formal looking flower. But underneath its sophisticated cloak, lies the heart of its humble ancestor.
Mature Dutch Hyacinths, in their first year, have narrow basal leaves and flowers spaced thickly along a stiff cylindrical raceme. They bloom in March/April and flower colors include red, white, pink, orange, salmon, yellow, purple and blue.
After a few years, when naturalized, even the most hefty hybrids shed much of their thick coat of flowers, resembling more and more their humble ancestor Hyacinthus orientalis, a style that fits with many gardening tastes today.
Indoor gardeners, by and large, prefer their hyacinths full-blossomed and deliciously fragrant. Readily forced into bloom, hyacinths have long been an indoor favorite. Specially-prepared bulbs available from mail-order firms and local garden centers, if potted in early September, are easily forced in time for the December holidays.
In formal plantings, hyacinths (before returning to their natural ways) provide elegant accents along walkways, around lamp posts or mail boxes or at the front of the border. They are also used quite effectively when planted in close groups among perennial shrubs.
Hyacinths are excellent container plants. Many gardeners regard sweetly-scented hyacinths as an essential element in spring window boxes, or containers placed near doorways. Mass groupings in low, basin-shaped containers are especially effective. Many Dutch gardeners like to force successive flowerings of hyacinths indoors in flowerpots. These are planted, pot and all, in larger outdoor containers. When one wave of flowers begin to fade, the pots are removed and replaced with new ones full of fresh flowers.
The Dutch Hyacinth: a stately, formal hybrid, a delicate naturalized flower or an elegant piece of room decor. The modern Dutch Hyacinth is truly a flower of many faces, a flower with a proud past and a vibrant present.
Click here for a list of historic hyacinths you can grow today.