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Tulipomania in Hollandiania

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With the approaching Tulip Time Festival (May 4-11) in Holland, Michigan,  I have decided to once again write about "tulipa gesneriana" and specifically the period of time in the Netherlands called "tulipomania".  As you can probably guess tulipomania was a time when Holland was obsessed with tulips.  This period in the 1600's saw the beautifying of Holland, which up until this time was quite muddy and dull looking, and also the strengthening of the Dutch market.  

The tulip, originally cultivated in Turkey found its way to Europe in the 1500's.  In fact the name tulip comes from the Turkish word for turban.  One theory for why it became so popular in the Netherlands is because of bleakness of the Dutch landscape.  Another reason they were popular was because of  their rarity.  In the tulip bulb their are little 'offsets' which is how new bulbs are grown.

The tulip rave in the Netherlands began with master gardener Carolus Clusius.  He brought some tulip bulbs back from the imperial botanical gardens in Vienna, where he was the curator, and started attracting attention from his neighbors.   They asked if he would sell some of his beautiful tulips, he declined.  His neighbors stole his tulip bulbs from the ground and sold them through out the Dutch territories.  How's that for nice neighbors.

As the rareness, beauty and difficulty of cultivation became known by upper classes, the price of tulips rose dramatically.  At one point a single bulb sold for 6,000 florins, an average year's wage was 150 florins.  There was even a competition for the first person to grow a black tulip.  It turns out there is no such thing as a black tulip, only a really dark maroon tulip, like the modern day hybrid called 'Queen of the Night'.  The winner of that competition received 100,000 florins, around 650 times the average yearly salary.  Alexandre Dumas even wrote a book about the whole affair.

Tulipomania soon came to an end when the tulip market crashed caused by oversupply, but the legacy of the tulip lives on as the symbol of the Netherlands.  What would the Netherlands look like without tulips?

The painting is by one of my new found favorites: Jean-Léon Gérôme
It is called " The Tulip Folly", soldiers were ordered to stomp on the tulips in order to stabilize the oversupplied market. The man in the foreground might even have a black tulip by his feet, quick get your prize!

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