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How the flower market went from bloom to bust.
Nothing symbolizes the Netherlands like the tulip, a magically bright flower that
can be seen in almost every window box in the country. They’re wildly popular though
they are today – Dutch farmers produce nine billion bulbs a year – their status
was even higher in the past. The first tulips were cultivated in the Ottoman Empire
for the sultan’s court in Constantinople. Merchants brought them to Holland, they
did not thrive in the damp, chilly climate until 1587. That was when a Flemish botanist
called Carolus Clusius founded Europe’s first institute for horticulture in Leiden
and began to study their growth. Despite his success, tulips remained rare and expensive,
and a garden full of tulips became a status symbol for Dutch merchants. The lovely
“feathered tulip,” which has broken color patterns and is more difficult to produce,
was the most prestigious. By the 1630s, the demand for the flower in Holland became
almost insatiable. Dutch businessmen began to speculate on the prices of tulip bulbs,
which could change radically from one crop to the next, depending on the seasons
and the harvest. A craze later dubbed “tulipmania” took over Holland as bidding
on the flowers became frenzied. Fortunes were won and lost. Prices kept rising to
astronomical levels. In 1635, a single white Semper Augustus bulb was sold for 10,000
florins – that’s about $7000 today – and clerics denounced “flower gambling” from
the pulpit. Two years later, the bubble burst. Families were wiped out overnight,
and many investors committed suicide. But eventually, the market reached rational
levels. The Dutch decided that other flowers – daffodils, irises, hyacinths and
gladioli – were almost as alluring as the tulip.
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