© Janet Davis
As we
busy ourselves each fall planting masses of plump, pointed tulip bulbs, it’s
fascinating to reflect on the colorful history of spring’s most popular bulb.
There are no native North American tulips. They grow at about 40° latitude in a band stretching from China, Japan and Russia through North Africa, Iraq and Turkey west into Crete and Mediterranean regions of Italy and France. Many wild species originate in China’s Tien Shan mountains.
The word tulip comes from the Arabic word “dulban” or “tulband”, meaning turban, a name suggested by the shape of the flower. Long before tulips were known in Europe, they were treasured by the Sultans of the vast Ottoman empire, where most of the tulip-growing regions were then found.
The first connection of these bulbs to
Holland occurred around 1573 when Ogier de Busbecq, an Austrian ambassador to
the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, sent seeds of tulips which he called
Tulipa Turcarum (“of the Turks”) to his botanist friend Carolus Clusius, then
prefect of Vienna’s Imperial Physic Garden. Clusius began to experiment with
cross-pollination of these tulips and others he soon acquired from seafaring
traders. In 1592 when he became curator of Holland’s first botanic garden, the
Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, he took his tulip collection with him.
Clusius’s tulips became renowned, though he declined to sell for any price. (Most of his collection was eventually stolen). Some of the varieties he grew and shared with others had dramatic stripes on the petals—breaks in the color pigment we now know were caused by viruses spread by a beetle. (Today’s feathered tulips are naturally occurring mutations called “sports”.) But as the tulip trade took off in the 17th century, these feathered and flamed tulips and the tiny offset bulbs they produced became for a brief time the hottest commodity in Europe, setting off a frenzy of speculative trading called “Tulipomania” (or Tulipmania).
Since the virus often occurred in tulips
grown in common cottage gardens, anybody could get into the act—and did. In
1636, when tulipomania was at its peak, the proceeds from the sale of three of
these prized tulips were enough to buy a house. Assuming they’d recoup their
investment the following spring, speculators paid for desirable bulbs with
oxen, horses or furniture, some trading on margin or mortgaging their homes.
Despite the government’s attempt to regulate tulip trade, many were ruined in
the frenzy, which fizzled out in 1637. Today, tulipomania is cited – along with
the 1929 stock market crash -- as a prime example of the dangers of rampant
speculation. For much more on the
frenzy, check out the tulip history stories on the website of the Netherlands Flowerbulb Information
Center.
Today, almost 2-billion tulip bulbs are exported from Holland for sale around the globe. Along with the rose, they are probably the world’s most popular flower.
Just a little history to reflect on as we indulge in our own autumn frenzy of “tulipomania”.
Adapted from a column that appeared originally in the Toronto Sun