Sea of Tulips

Tulip Mania

In the early seventeenth century in Holland, the Dutch had developed such an overwhelming fascination with tulips, it set into motion "Tulip Mania". From 1633 to 1636, tulip stands packed the streets in urban centers. Tulip bulbs were sold from June to October, “the dry bulb months”. Bulbs sometimes passed through many hands and were known as ”tulip cash”.

By 1634, variegated and speckled tulips (“Broken Tulips”) were coveted more than gold and the demand for them was so great that the broken tulips trade became a futures market. Growers sold them by weight and investors offered them promissory notes for extraordinary amounts of money for lots of bulbs that were still in the ground. A single broken tulip bulb could sell for as much as a townhouse on The Grand Canal in Amsterdam.

In December 1636, tulip prices soared so high that even ordinary tulips could no longer be afforded by anyone except aristocrats and the well heeled. Undaunted, there were still groups of speculators in a mad rush to buy highly prized specimens. In late February 1637 the tulip bubble burst, and Tulip Mania was suddenly and resoundingly over.

There are widely varying opinions among historians about how much the crash affected the Dutch economy, that was the strongest economy in Europe at that time, other than that there was some collateral damage. Where there is a consensus is that Tulip Mania was the first economic bubble. 

Long after the Tulip Mania ended, Holland's love for tulips endured. The flowers played a central role in Dutch still-life paintings for the next century.

Ironically, it wasn’t until the 1920s with the advancement in virus reasearch that it was discovered that the highly valued “broken tulips” were caused by a virus. This explains why horticulturists had been baffled about how to breed and propagate them. What researchers found was that the virus weakened bulbs over successive generations to where they could no longer flower. This explained why the most celebrated broken tulips of the 1600’s, The Semper Augustus and The Viceroy, no longer existed. 

Today the Dutch are still the biggest suppliers of tulips in the world. Tulips are rated #2 on many of the "world's most popular flowers" lists, second only to roses. There are more than 3000 registered varieties.

~C