October 7, 1998

How the little tulip drove a nation crazy is a rather interesting story.  Carolus Clusius started the saga in the 16^th century when he moved from Vienna to Leiden in Holland to head up the city’s botanical garden.  He brought along some tulip bulbs given to him by Vienna’s ambassador to the Turkish Empire.  Many folks wanted him to share the bulbs for cultivation, but he refused.  So late one night they stole part of his collection.

The bandits began breeding and selling the bulbs and in a short time the Dutch got hooked on tulips.  Only the wealthy were able to obtain the rare bulbs at first, but tulips soon became the Dutch equivalent of Beanie Babies.  The rich clamored for them and the newly rich wanted the bulbs to show their wealth.  The whole thing got crazy, with some bulbs selling for more than $2000 each.  Many bulbs were never planted, only displayed prominently in the home of the proud owner.  The buying and selling of bulbs became an obsession.  Bulbs even began to be sold by weight, using the same unit of measure, the grain, as was used by gold merchants.

As "Tulipmania" ensued, a futures market of sorts developed.  Tulips were traded all year long, even though they were only out of the ground and deliverable through late summer and fall.  Tulips were bought and sold several times before they were even harvested.  Some were traded that never existed.  As the word spread about how much money was being made trading tulips, everyone wanted in on the action.   Despite government attempts to curb the frenzy, people were hocking their possessions for one precious bulb.

I know what you’re thinking.  Why would anyone pay so much money for just a flower bulb?  But remember there are some people today paying several hundred dollars for a mass-produced cloth creature filled less than half full with plastic beads.   But I digress.

Then one day several bulb merchants had some trouble getting the usual price for their bulbs.  Others heard of their plight and decided to sell quickly before the inevitable happened.  And the inevitable did happen in 1637, when the bloom quickly faded, so to speak, and the market for bulbs burned out in a flash.

When the dust settled, the Dutch came to their senses and decided to make lemonade out of those bulbs.  The rest is history.  Now it is impossible to picture Holland without imagining field after field of yellow and red tulips.  Today Holland produces more than 3 billion tulip bulbs on a mere 23,000 acres.

It’s easy to see how such a flower as the tulip could enamor any gardener.   It is one of the first flowers of spring, appearing when we need them most--after the dark gray days of winter.  Although breeders have created an endless list of hybrid tulips, there are a number of old species tulips that are even more charming and beautiful.  These are varieties whose parents are still found growing on the ancient slopes and mountainsides of far-off places like Turkistan, Russia, and Asia Minor.   These rugged little flowers bloom for many years when planted in a place like home.

Tulipa greigii has handsome foliage with striations of deep burgundy and mahogany against a soft gray-green. The beautiful leaves are reason enough to plant these tulips, but it is the flower that catches the eye of even a casual gardener.  T. g. ‘Red Riding Hood’ is the best known of these tulips with brilliant hot red flowers above mottled leaves. W e planted a handful of these bulbs more than ten years ago and they are still appearing in the early garden even though the neighboring perennials compete for space and light.

One of the first species to bloom in the spring is Tulipa kaufmanniana, the waterlily tulip.  It yields huge pale flowers above short 3-inch stems.  The soft colored ones resemble simple waterlily blossoms.  The bright red flowers of another species, Tulipa linifolia open wide and flat.  Each petal is pinched at the tip, coming to a point, and very closely resembling a poinsettia bloom.

Planted where they get at least a half day of sun in well-drained soil, these little bulbs will provide more than a few years of color and brightness to early spring days.