Tulip Bulb
Useful Info on the Tulip Bulb
If you asked most people where the tulip bulb came from, the answer they would give is Holland, or maybe the Netherlands. That’s because when you think of tulips, you tend to envision the Dutch countryside, little girls in wooden shoes, and rows and rows of colorful tulips. While this view is in part correct, the tulip bulb did not originate in Holland. It came from Central Asia, growing wild in China, Japan, and parts of North America. The wild tulip looks quite different from the tulips we know today, and it is the Dutch that can take credit for developing most of the current hybrids.
Turkey was also popularizing tulips before the Dutch. They were growing tulips as far back as 1000 AD. Most of the tulip bulbs that made it to Europe came from what is now Russia and parts of the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey). It was during this Turkish tulip period that the tulip became a symbol of wealth and privilege. It also became a symbol of perfect love. The tulip is still the national flower of Turkey.
One of the most curious happenings in the history of the tulip bulb was a Dutch financial crisis that came to be known as Tulipmania. Tulips made their way to Holland by way of a botanist named Carolus Clusius. While doing some work in Vienna, Clusius met a man named De Busbecq who was an ambassador in the Ottoman Empire. He gave Clusius some tulip bulbs that he had gotten from Central Asia. Clusius brought the tulips to Holland, and later became head botanist for the first botanical garden at the University of Leiden.
Clusius was the first to plant a tulip bulb in Dutch soil. Meanwhile, the public was beginning to develop an interest in tulips because of some paintings that were becoming famous. One that we now know as “Rembrandt’s Tulips,” was a portrait of Carolus Clusius. Clusius kept his tulips private and never distributed a tulip bulb to the public. However, as Dutch desire for the rare tulip bulbs grew, some tulip plants were stolen from his garden.
Once a few bulbs got into the hands of the Dutch public, their popularity immediately put them in great demand. This was the beginning of a period of financial history known as Tulipmania. As it was almost impossible to obtain a tulip bulb, it became worth much money and buying and selling tulip commodities became extremely popular. All of this happened in the early 1600s.
Only the rich could afford to buy tulips, and since they were in such short supply eventually tulip traders started to buy options on tulips. The product was never in hand. In the 1620s, one tulip for which there were only twelve bulbs was selling for the equivalent today of $1500. At the height of tulip trading, another tulip bulb sold for $86,000 and some were rumored to sell for over $120,000. With so much speculative trading, soon legal documents were being forged and nonexistent tulips were being sold. When a group of investors couldn’t get as high a price as they wanted, the whole tulip market had the equivalent of a stock market crash and the rich tulip investors lost everything.
Most of the tulips that were selling for tens of thousands of dollars can be bought today for 50-cents per tulip bulb. The Dutch interest in tulips never ended though and tulips began to be planted in great quantities to sell. Today, Holland produces around nine billion tulip bulbs each year and approximately seven billion of them are exported. Holland takes in three-fourths of a billion dollars in sales every year. The U.S. spends in the range of one hundred thirty million dollars a year in Dutch tulip bulb imports.