Tulipmania

A recent visit to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Woodburn, Oregon stirred my curiosity about the incident of tulip mania in the 17th century.

It began with Semper Augustus. This tulip with midnight-blue petals topped by a band of  white and accented with crimson flares created a craze. In 1624, an Amsterdam man owned the only dozen specimens. He received an offer of 3,000 guilders for one bulb, roughly equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. The bulb's owner, whose name is now lost to history, rejected the offer.

Tulipmania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by British journalist Mike Dash explains how tulipmania began. In 1558,  before the first tulip bloomed in Bavaria, the flower had intrigued the Persians and rulers of the Ottoman Empire.

In the 17th century, Amsterdam merchants became the center of the East Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They displayed success with grand estates surrounded by flower gardens.

''It is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the 17th century,'' says Dash. ''The colors they exhibited were more intense and concentrated than those of ordinary plants.''   Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound. Around 1630,  professional tulip traders sought out flower lovers and speculators. The supply of tulip buyers grew quickly but the supply of bulbs did not. It takes seven years to grow one from seed.  Bulbs can produce two or three clones annually, but the mother bulb only lasts a few years.

Bulb prices rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators wedged into the market. Weavers and farmers mortgaged whatever they could to raise cash to begin trading. In 1633, a farmhouse in Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any tulip would sell for hundreds of guilders.

Tulip mania reached its peak during the winter of 1636-37, when some bulbs changed hands ten times in a day. The zenith came early that winter, at an auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left by their father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen bulb, about to split in two, sold for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. The flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders.

Then the tulip market crashed. At a routine bulb auction, for the first time people refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips evaporated.

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, well-established in 1630, wouldn't touch tulips. ''The speculation in tulip bulbs always existed at the margins of Dutch economic life,'' Dash writes. After the market crashed, a compromise was brokered that let most traders settle their debts for a fraction of their liability. The overall fallout on the Dutch economy was negligible.

We don't see crazed spending for tulips these days.  The Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, currently celebrating the 25th Anniversary of  their annual Tulip Festival. Visit their catalogue at  http://www.woodenshoe.com/ for reasonably priced tulips.