Depending on one's personal tastes, most people would say the most beautiful flower was probably the orchid, or maybe a Protea, but the tulip would be somewhere near the top. Even so, no flower caused more financial boons or bounces. They've caused personal fortune and personal ruin to, not only people, but nations. Because they are high on everybody's list, but not nearly as expensive as an orchid or Protea, they are right up there with roses as the biggest sellers worldwide. Today there are more than 4,000 named varieties among 15 different classes. More than half of the kinds of bulbs Holland sells are tulips, and Holland is the biggest producer of bulbs in the world.
Before the tulip knew it was going to be famous, it was humble. I knew it when it was a nobody, only grown in Persia. When the Turks swept through Persia, they praised it. They collected it and began to pay high prices over it. The humble tulip began to get conceited. Eventually, Turks began to have tulips forever on their minds, as evidenced by the fact that tulips worked their way into drawings, carvings, and weavings of all things Turkish. These flowers were present and popular through most of the 500 year Ottoman Dynasty. The Ottoman Turks began pushing into Europe. They invaded Hungary and besieged Vienna. I believe the now insane tulip was the cause of this. Through ESP or perhaps some kind of subliminal messaging, the tulip provided the military tactics, the Turk generals used to accomplish their victories. You see, the tulip wanted to conquer the world, BWA HAAAA HA HA HA.
The Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I had sent an emissary to talk peace with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, but this man died from mistreatment in one of Suleiman's prisons. Knowing the tulip as I do, I'm sure it will one day be discovered that this emissary was not an appreciater of tulips, so the tulip ‘inspired' Suleiman to have him killed. Oh, the black-hearted evil of this bulb.
In 1554 Ferdinand sent a Fleming named Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq to refill the post. This man was more susceptible to the subconscious hypnotic song of the tulip. The man was successful in his task of bringing peace (I'm sure the tulip convinced Suleiman it was the wise thing to do), and eventually, his wanderings (between Adrianople and Constantinople) brought de Busbecq to a garden which he described as, ...an abundance of flowers everywhere - narcissus, hyacinths, and those which the Turks call ‘tulipam' - much to our astonishment because it was almost midwinter, a season unfriendly to flowers. De Busbecq actually got the name wrong. The Turks call the tulip ‘lale', and after being asked what they were, his interpreter probably said they look like a ‘thoulypen', their word for turban. De Busbecq must have heard tulipam, and later people shortened it to tulip. The sly tulip then convinced the Turks to give de Busbecq some seeds to take back to Vienna. No longer needing the Turks to increase the tulip's conquered lands, the Ottoman Empire gradually declined and gave ground to the Europeans. Excellent horticulturist that he was, de Busbecq's tulips grew well in Vienna and multiplied.
The tulip then bided its time in Austria till it had gathered enough strength for a push into western Europe. This came in 1601, when another Fleming (Dutch) by the name of Carolus Clusius, who had been the imperial gardener in Vienna (now under Maximillian II), gave up the post to become a professor/head of the botanical gardens in Leiden. He agreed with the tulips to take a large army, er, supply of bulbs with him to Holland. Rather than being allowed to begin their onslaught of this new nation, the tulips found that, though many people had seen them and were trying to buy them, Clusius betrayed them by demanding such a high price that nobody could afford them. This betrayal was seriously inhibiting their invasion, so they contacted some unknown low-lifes to come over the walls on a dark night and steal away the bulbs.... almost all of them. Whoever they ended up with, they were well cared for, because tulips were soon distributed throughout Holland. This was the beginning of the Dutch bulb business.
Early in the 17th century, rich Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Frenchmen were competing with each other for these prize status symbols. Tulip appreciation became tulip-love, which then became what has come to be known as tulip-mannia. New color varieties brought especially huge prices, and new color varieties seemed to be sprouting up at an unbelievable rate. Unknown at the time, these new color varieties were caused by a virus. Yes, dear reader, the tulip invaders had caught something like herpes. It wasn't deadly, it just gave them strange color breaks. When the Dutch eventually realized that these tulips weren't following genetic laws and that any common tulip could, in another year, produce something entirely different, the whole economy went crazy. People were buying special tulips, to be sure, but they were also buying any variety they could get their hands on. Soon growing and competition gave way to speculation. People were buying tulips which had yet to be born at increasingly insane prices. In 1624, a grower sold a red and white tulip with a blue tint at the base (called Semper Augustus) for the equivalent of $1200 (Time-Life Encyclopedia of Gardening Bulbs printed in 1972, so apply 30 years of inflation to that). This grower regretted it almost immediately, for there were two bumps on the bottom which would soon become new bulbs, and the following year, two bulbs sold for $1,500 each. At the peak of Tulip-mannia (about 1634), three of these bulbs sold for $30,000 (30 years of inflation here too). One brewer swapped his entire brewery for a single bulb. Houses were mortgaged and family jewels pawned. One bulb, named Viceroy, was traded for 2 loads of wheat, 4 loads of rye, 4 fat oxen, 8 fat swine, 12 fat sheep, 2 hogsheads of wine, 4 barrels of beer, 2 barrels of butter, 1,000 lbs of cheese, one complete bed, one suit of clothes, and one silver tankard. In another deal, a man traded 12 acres of land for a bulb. In still another deal, one bulb brought the price of a carriage, a pair of horses, and what amounted to $4,600 in cash (only 20 years of inflation from this book). What were being traded were simple pieces of paper rather than actual bulbs, much like the modern market for wheat futures. From the variety of things traded in the deals I mentioned, it sounds like people were offering the sum of everything they owned for a bulb.
As long as customers remained interested, the prices kept escalating. As long as prices escalated, investors made money. Three years after the peak in 1634 came the crash in 1637, which was much worse than our stock market crash in the ‘'20s. On one spring day of that year, a number of powerful traders decided to get out. They had lost interest and were fearful of the ever-increasing prices, so they dumped all their bulbs and flooded the market. The prices plummeted. Everybody wanted to sell - nobody wanted to buy. Some committed suicide, others settled with creditors for 5 or 10% of what they owed, still others just disappeared rather than pay their debts. One man, named Evrard Forstius, who was a professor of botany at Leiden, was profoundly affected by the crash - he used to beat tulips to death with his walking stick if he came across any. In the end, the government forbade speculation, and the Dutch settled down to produce a solid bulb growing business.
The types originally taken from Turkey were in the ‘Lily-flowered' category which had petals which came to a point. The multicolored types and the rounded-petal types produced by the Dutch eventually made their way back to Turkey and, between 1718 and 1730, resulted in a similar craze known as the ‘tulip epoch' of Turkish history. Especially popular here, at this time, were the parrot/Rembrandt tulips.
There were also tulip collaborators here in America. Washington and Jefferson both aided them. Am I wrong? Could there be a more evil bulb? Here in America, the tulip was also popular with the common people. During the Industrial Revolution, when many of these common people moved to the urban areas, they brought with them the tulips they grew back on the farms. The varieties brought from these country cottages became known collectively as ‘cottage tulips'. Their popularity peaked in about 1880, and a few generations later, the Darwins and Darwin hybrids were developed, which became the new favorites and have remained so right up till today.
Obviously, tulips have no evil plans against humans. I was just having fun with the story. I hope none of this fantasizing caused any confusion. Everything I described as happening actually happened, and the names, dates, and business deals were all true. The only thing that wasn't was the thoughts and acts of the tulips. All in all, I'd say tulips have had an amazing history.
