Tulips Facts and Trivia

Amazing Facts About Tulips That You May Not Know

1. The famous tulips of Holland are not from Holland.


2. Tulips originated from areas around the Black Sea in the Crimean Peninsula, and from some wide varieties that grew in Greece, Turkey, Afghanistan and Kashmir.


3. Tulip came from the turkish word “dulband” which is the origin of turban in English and is translated into Latin as “tulipa”.


4. The Turks named these flowers “tulipan” a corruption of the word “dulband” because of its resemblance in shape to the headwrap worn by them and other Middle East people.


5. The Turks were the first to cultivate tulips in flower beds as early as 1529. It was introduced in the Netherlands only in 1554.


6. By 1620 tulips had spread in popularity and was regarded as de rigueur for every palace garden in northern Europe.


7. The Dutch went crazy about them… really crazy, some varieties could cost more than an Amsterdam house at that time. It was what was popularly known as the “Tulipmania”.


8. The Tulipmania started in Holland, one day in the early 1630′s when a singly in existence Viceroy tulip bulb variety, changed hands.


9. Its price was paid in kind and was as follows : four fat oxen, eight fat pigs, twelve fat sheep ( had to be fat… thin is unacceptable), four loads of rye, four barrels of eight-florin beer, two loads of wheat, two hogsheads of wine, two barrels of butter… one thousand pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes and a silver beaker. The lot valued at 2,500 florins.


10. About the same time, one bulb of Semper Augustus variety which was very rare during those times ( only two horticulturists in Holland have them, one in Amsterdam and one in Haarlem ) was sold for twice that sum, plus a fine new carriage to go with it.


11. A second single bulb of the same variety was considered as a lavish dowry.


12. And a third was exchanged for a flourishing brewery (could be Heineken but yet have to research on that).


13. In the months of late 1636 to early 1637 there was a complete Tulipmania in the Netherlands.


14. To have tulips in one’s home then, was as impressive as having a Ferrari in your garage today.


15. Finally the tulips lost its high value as the market was saturated with thousands of varieties ( brought about by enterprising merchants who initiated the onslaught of tulip cultivation) and in the end it wasn’t as rare anymore and there came the “Tulip Crash”, the first economic bubble that burst.


16. After recovery, and over the years the Dutch continued to cultivate tulips and it became a part of their culture.


17. It has been crossbred continuously in time and now comes in countless colours and variations.


18. Nearly half of Holland’s 47,150 acres of flower bulb farms are planted with tulip bulbs and every year about three billion tulip bulbs are produced in Holland.


19. One billion tulip bulbs are for domestic use, and approximately two billion are exported. The major export market is the United States, with nearly one billion bulbs a year. Most of these bulbs exported to the US end up with home gardeners.


20. The rest are exported as far as Japan and to the outlying European neighbors of the Netherlands.


Today, tulips are synonymous with Holland which had become its symbol alongside with windmills and wooden shoes.




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