Etching of Augerius Gislenus Busbeq (1522 -92) who was the Austrian ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I and later (1582-85) in Paris. In 1556 he made the first report of tulips growing in the gardens of Adrianople and Constantinople, the Turks probably having cultivated them since about AD1000, from the plant's origin around the Black Sea, in the Crimea, and in the steppes to the north of the Caucasus. They began to be seen in Europe in the 1560s, as great rarities and exclusively in elite circles. Later, in Vienna, Busbeq gave several tulip bulbs and seeds to the great botanist Carolus Clusius and the latter introduced tulips to Holland from 1593 through the botanic garden of the University of Leiden, where he was appointed head botanist in 1593.

Busbeq is also credited with having introduced the horse chestnut and lilac to Europe and was the author of important published letters on the Turks and their customs, based on his long first-hand experience of the country.

The engraver Boulonois is thought to have flourished about 1682.