TiptoeThruTulips

Tulips are symbols of spring, symbols of beauty, symbols of The Netherlands – and, in the spring of 2009, symbols of Pilgrim Hall Museum’s celebration of “The Year of the Dutch”!

2009 is the 400^th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in the Dutch city of Leiden, where they would spend 11 formative years before embarking (via Southampton, England and a ship named the Mayflower) for the New World. During those years, the Pilgrims lived, worked, married, raised their children, grew into a cohesive and principled community – and became acquainted with a new and exotic flower, the tulip.

During the Middle Ages, the number of flowers available for European gardeners was limited. There were hollyhocks, carnations, violets, peonies, daisies, buttercups, lilies, roses and marigolds and, perhaps, 90 others. When exotic new flowers, grown in the Middle East and in the newly-discovered lands of the Americas, began to appear in Europe, there was great excitement!

Among the rarest, most exotic and most expensive of the new flowers was the tulip. The tulip had only been introduced into Europe in the 1500s. Its newness, however, went far beyond its recent discovery. The tulip was also new in concept. Unlike previous flowering plants, the tulip was unique in having absolutely no medicinal or culinary application. Tulips existed purely to be beautiful.

The close connection between tulips and Leiden resulted from a series of happy coincidences.

The tulip was first cultivated in the gardens of Istanbul. It was noticed there in 1556 by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian’s ambassador to the Ottomans. When de Busbecq returned to the Emperor’s court in Vienna, he brought tulip seeds with him. The resulting blooms were greatly admired.

	Exotic and highly valued, tulip seeds were precious gifts that slowly found their way to a few of the finest gardens of Vienna, Frankfurt, The Netherlands and London (William Cecil, Lord Burghley, close adviser to Queen Elizabeth, had tulips in his gardens). It took another 20 years before these rare flowers caught the interest of a prominent botanist, Carolus Clusius. Clusius studied, propagated, disseminated and ultimately popularized tulips. Born Charles de L’Ecluse in France in 1526, Clusius had Latinized his name in the humanist tradition of Renaissance scholars who were rediscovering the ideals of the classical age. After studying medicinal botany at the German university of Marburg, he traveled throughout Europe in search of new plants, establishing a wide network of colleagues with whom he exchanged letters and plant specimens. He then spent several years at the Imperial Medicinal Herb Garden in Prague. With his reputation established, the Holy Roman Emperor invited him in 1573 to establish the first botanical garden in the Empire’s capital city of Vienna. Here he became acquainted with Ambassador de Busbecq, who had just received a large quantity of tulip seeds. Clusius successfully cultivated these seeds in 1575 and obtained flowers that were yellow, red, white and purple as well as variegated. The next year, Clusius published his first account of tulips. Several more illustrated versions followed, with the last one completed in 1592 but not published until 1601.
Tulipa Praecox Flava A yellow early-blooming tulip as drawn by Carolus Clusius

In 1593, Clusius was offered the prestigious post of head botanist at a new botanical garden, or “Hortus,” at the University of Leiden.

The University of Leiden, the only university in The Netherlands, had been founded in 1575. Leiden was then a busy manufacturing city of some 20,000 people, located in the center of The Netherlands. The city was expanding rapidly. It is estimated that, between 1581 and 1621, over 28,000 immigrants (many of them refugees, like the Pilgrims) arrived in Leiden.

When Clusius arrived in Leiden in 1593, he brought part of his collection, including his tulips, with him. He established his “Hortus” on a third of an acre with a separate garden area for tulips. By 1608 (the year before Clusius’ death), the botanical garden in Leiden contained more than 600 tulip bulbs – and the Pilgrims, residents of Leiden between 1609 and 1620 and well acquainted with the University, would have enjoyed their spring display.

Clusius’ reputation, however, does not rest on his extensive garden. His true and lasting contribution lay in his cataloging of his tulips. Clusius established the standard for descriptive botany. He described his tulips by their colors, their markings and patterns, their height, their shape and whether they were early or late bloomers. He was most impressed with the large number of variants among the tulips and identified 34 separate groups. He also inadvertently created the basis for a commercial market in tulips by establishing a hierarchy for tulips in which some flowers became “rare” and others were more common.

The most sought after tulips had eye-catching markings with vibrant colors forming contrasting patterns or “flames.” Some of these colorations were due to the mosaic virus, whose workings were not understood until the 20^th century. Others were due to the happenstance of tulips from different groups being planted in gardens together, with natural pollination creating new and elaborate hybrids. Tulips were noted for their infinite possible color combinations and patterns. The English botanist John Gerard, in his 1597 Herball, or General Historie of Plantes, described how his friend James Garret, a “learned Apothecarie of London, hath undertaken to find out, if it were possible, their infinite sorts, by diligent sowing of their seeds… for the space of twenty years, not being yet able to attaine to the end of his travel, for that each new yeare bringeth forth new plants of sundry colours not before seen.” As impressive as James Garret’s tulip collection was, Clusius’ was even larger. It was, in fact, not only the largest and most varied in Europe but the central point for the cultivation and distribution of new varieties. As Clusius’ bulbs spread across Europe, they formed the basis for what would become an industry. Tulips became commercially produced and a market for tulip bulbs, centered in The Netherlands, was established. The cultivation and sale of tulips and other flowering bulbs is still one of Holland’s foremost industries.
	TulipaPraecoxRubraVaria A variegated red early-blooming tulip as drawn by Carolus Clusius

Dutch society and the Dutch economy were among the most sophisticated of their time. By the early 17^th century, the Dutch had established a public exchange bank (1609), a lending bank (1614) and a commodity exchange (1618), all of which drew customers and investors from all over Europe. The Dutch were well used to speculation, including “futures” and “selling short,” and all the inherent risks (although the authorities did not approve of the riskiest types of futures trading, where the actual shares or commodities were not actually in hand, and refused to enforce these sorts of futures contracts if there was a dispute). The Netherlands was a prosperous and largely urban society, unlike most of the rest of Europe. Many of its residents had been involved in shipbuilding and international trade for generations. Economic power did not lay with the aristocracy; it was in the hands of wealthy merchants and urbanized upper and middle classes.

The result was a large population with disposable income, a cosmopolitan outlook, a sophisticated economic acumen, and an interest in the finer things in life – including art and gardens – that were sometimes seen not just as consumer goods, but as investments. Among the exotic and desirable consumer goods that became “commodities” was the tulip. It was around the time that the Pilgrims left Leiden for America, that tulip growing began to become an industry, with commercial cultivators on one hand and tulip buyers – and tulip investors – on the other.

Sixteen years after the Pilgrims’ departure, the Dutch tulip industry went through a period of stress that imprinted itself on the public imagination as “tulipmania” or “tulipomania.”

During 1636 and 1637, prices for tulip bulb futures rose and then, in some instances, precipitously fell as the courts refused to enforce contracts. This greatly excited popular moralizers who, in writing broadsides and sermons, exaggerated the facts. Their wilder and wilder stories were, in turn, repeated and embellished, and then gained an acceptance as “truth” that was, in fact, not borne out by records and documents.

Most of the stories about tulipmania can be classified as “urban legends” – stories that cannot be confirmed by the actual records but which persist because they are useful or amusing. The “amusing” is obvious! One often-repeated story had a befuddled Dutch tulip buyer trading 4 oxen, 8 pigs, 12 sheep, 2 tons of butter and 1000 pounds of cheese as well as gallons of wine and beer, and bushels upon bushels of wheat & rye, along with furniture and clothes and even a ship in which to carry all these goods – for a single “futures” tulip bulb! This story is not only patently ridiculous but the supposed transaction never actually happened. It was such a good story, however, that it was repeated again and again and again – and can still be found today in books and online Websites.

But why would such a ridiculous story also be “useful”? Because exaggerated stories such as this (which is only one of several) were largely cautionary tales used by civil or religious authorities to combat the supposed greed of later generations or to warn against allowing “lower classes” to invest and, thereby, participate in what the more elite saw as their rightful sphere.

The reality is that, except for a single month in 1637 when prices for common tulip bulbs did surge and fall, there was no true irrationality involved. Rare bulbs were valuable before, during AND after the so-called tulipmania and there seems to be been no true economic stress resulting from the fall in prices. Tulip bulbs still were sought-after and expensive and, when the price levels for bulbs for 1643 are examined, it is clear that neither the peaks nor the declines experienced in the 1630s were unreasonable. (It is also worth noting that, even today, prototypes of new varieties of flower bulbs remain very expensive, although they are usually traded privately and the prices not publicized.)

Not only did the tulip industry survive, but tulips continued to be well-loved and well-represented in Dutch art. Luxury goods, such as the desirable tin-glazed earthenware made in the city of Delft, often included exuberant and colorful tulips.

Although tulips spread across Europe and across the Atlantic, they always remained a symbol of The Netherlands – and a significant part of their mercantile economy. Today, the Dutch flower industry produces more than three billion bulbs annually, nearly half of them tulips. Two-thirds of these are exported (largely to the United States) and the other billion remains in The Netherlands and is used for the “forcing” of cut flowers. The largest growing fields are in a special section of The Netherlands called de Bollenstreek, between Haarlem and Leiden.

The continuing predominance of the Dutch in the tulip trade is all the more surprisingly because the tulip’s natural habitat is high elevations in the mountains, with a thick winter snow cover. Holland, in contrast, is largely below sea-level and winters are not particularly cold. The Dutch have specialized over the centuries, however, in managing their environment and have built a system of canals and drainage ditches that draw surplus water from the fields and away from the precious and vulnerable bulbs.

Europe’s most famous display of tulips is near Leiden at the Keukenhof Park, the world’s largest flower garden, which is visited annually by over 800,000 people during its two-month spring floral display.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clusius, Carolus. A treatise on tulips. Translated & annotated by W. Van Dijk. Haarlem, The Netherlands: The Associated Bulb Growers of Holland, 1951.
Dash, Mike. Tulipomania. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999.
Garber, Peter M. Famous first bubbles: the fundamentals of early manias. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.
Goldgar, Anne. Tulipmania: money, honor and knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Faust, Joan Lee. “Tulips: a history of success,” New York Times, 2 September 1990.

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A Dutch-made Delftware lobed dish (1660-1700) features bright yellow tulips with blue outlines. From the collections of Pilgrim Hall Museum.	Tulips caught everyone’s imagination! Pottery makers in other European countries followed the Dutch example and used tulips as a decorative motif. This bowl, with blue tulips, was made in England between 1675 and 1700. From the collections of Pilgrim Hall Museum.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips