Watching the Ayaan tulip grow in Amsterdam

Visitors to Amsterdam this spring will be see a new tulip growing in the park beside the Rijksmuseum. The Ayaan is deep purple in colour; it joins a group of rare plants known in Holland as "black" tulips.

On 4 November, in a ceremony at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the tulip was named after Ayaan Hirsi Ali in recognition of her defence of the human rights of Muslim women. Hirsi Ali completed the traditional naming ceremony by pouring champagne over the plant and declaring, "From now on, this tulip has the name 'Ayaan'".

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a native of Somalia. She emigrated to the Netherlands and was elected a member of the Dutch parliament. In 2004, she teamed up with Dutch film director Theo van Gogh to make Submission, a film about the mistreatment of women in Islam. Van Gogh was later murdered on an Amsterdam street by a Muslim extremist. Ayaan Hirsi Ali now lives in Washington, DC, where she works at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank.

The Ayaan tulip is a dark purple bulb hybridized by Lydia Boots, one of few women working in the male-dominated world of tulip hybridizing. Many experts consider Tulipa ayaan to be one of the finest results of the centuries-old quest of Dutch hybridizers to create a truly black tulip.