The tulip is the international symbol for Parkinson’s. The story of the Parkinson’s tulip began in 1980 in the Netherlands when JWS Van der Wereld, a Dutch horticulturalist who had Parkinson’s, gave the name ‘Dr James Parkinson’ to the red and white tulip he had developed.

In 1981 he registered his prize cultivar, the ‘Dr James Parkinson’ bulb. The name was chosen to honour Dr James Parkinson, the English doctor who described the condition in his 1817 "Essay on the shaking palsy” and to honour the International Year of the Disabled.