March 12 2007

Text By Greg Fallis

In the year 1635 a merchant in Haarlem, in the United Provinces of the Netherlands, purchased a single tulip bulb for 6000 florins. The average annual income of a Dutch citizen at that time was around 150 florins. A fat, healthy swine cost about 30 florins; a sheep only 10 florins.

The introduction of tulips into the Netherlands sparked a sort of madness. The bulbs came from the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire; Europe had never seen flowers of such intense color, flowers with such astonishing diversity. Dutch horticulturists found a way to develop still more dramatic variety by grafting ordinary bulbs with 'broken' bulbs, bulbs that produced flowers with strange lines.

The result was not only amazing flowers, but radical social change. Tulip thievery became rampant; merchants hired guards for their bulbs. Merchants made and lost fortunes engaging in rabid tulip speculation through informal stock exchanges. Tulips became the subject of poems and literature, including a 16,000 verse epic poem by Petrus Hondius and an adventure novel by Alexander Dumas. Painters like Rembrandt and van den Hecke memorialized famous tulips on canvas.

The tulip market wilted and died, of course. That's what tulips do. But some of that faded glory still exists in every tulip that blossoms. So when you next see a tulip, be sure to send a silent thank you to Suleiman the Magnificent and remember that there once was a time and place where flowers were used as currency.