The Maria Kaczynska tulip, a new Dutch bread of the flower named after the Polish president's wife, has been presented to the First Lady at a ceremony honoring Polish participants of paralympics. 

Slawek Szefs reports

The Dutch ambassador to Poland presented the First Lady with an official certificate numbered 00001 and the first bulb of the Maria Kaczynska tulip. The occasion had been a charity campaign organized for Joanna Mendak, a Polish gold medalist of the Paralympic Games in Beijing. The next series of 49 bulbs were auctioned to raise funds to support the handicapped athlete. 

Ambassador Marnix Krop expressed conviction that the cream yellow tulip, which took world famous breader Jan Ligthart 18 years to cross, will become a symbol of Polish-Dutch friendship. To underscore the importance of his words His Excellency addressed the First Lady in Polish: 'May this tulip remind of you, a modest and sensitive person. Hopefuly, these bulbs will turn into beautiful cream colored flowers, blossoming not only in the Presidential Gardens, but also in gardens of thousands of your countrymen.'  

This echoed an earlier declaration by ambassador Krop when he saluted Maria Kaczynska during a ceremony marking the Day of the Queen in April, considered the main national holiday in the Netherlands: 'We wish to pay tribute to the First Lady of Poland, whom we know as a person who, without putting herself at the fore, is highly respected in her country. She stood with Poland in difficult years and contributed actively to its regained liberty. Of course, she firmly supports her husband, the president. But as a modern woman, she also has interests and opinions of her own. Part of her life she spent in Gdansk, a city which shares a common history with the Netherlands. And this may have given her a taste for what we ourselves consider to be among the Dutch characteristics: tolerance and independent judgement.'     

Maria Kaczynska was clearly moved on the occasion: 'Best wishes to the Kingdom of Netherlands. Thank you very, very much for the beautiful tulip. I'm too moved to speak more...'  

Casale Stephane Alonso, Warsaw-based correspondent of NRC Handelsblad, explains there is much more to Polish-Dutch relations than friendly gestures, however important they may be: 'I think Polish-Dutch cooperation right now is quite good. There are a lot of Dutch entrepreneurs who are doing business in Poland. There are the examples of Dutch farmers who are farming in Poland quite successfuly, too. And we have a lot of Polish migrants in the Netherlands. In a way, both countries are doing each other favors. So, in this sense it's a good relation in the economic sphere. But, of course, there are hiccups.' 

Enough to mention the Baltic pipeline project which attracts great interest of Dutch business, while Poland strongly opposes the concept, or policy governing energy generation. The Dutch have developed wind powered technology, while Poland is just starting to implement energy generation from renewable sources, having industry dependent on its hard coal supplies for long decades. But all this is not an insurmountable obstacle, as there is a will on both sides to cooperate in as many areas as possible and not to look for differences. This approach has been valid since the 17th century when Polish timber found its way to the Netherlands for shipbuilders there to construct excellent barges for navigating Dutch canals. 

During the tulip presentation Mauryts Werhejden of the Dutch embassy in Warsaw explained the manner in which new varieties of the world famous flower receive their names: 'Every year a number of tulip varieties appear on the market in the Netherlands and they are then named after personalities. These can be football players, famous composers or, for instance First Ladies, like Madame Kaczynska.' 

Let's hope there will be more Polish names worth honoring by the Dutch in at least the same way as the First Lady.