Tulip mania

What happened

Tulips were new, fashionable and scarce. The most prized had petals streaked with flames of red or purple on white, and the most famous was called Semper Augustus. Bulbs can only be moved when dormant in summer, so in winter people traded written promises to buy bulbs at lifting time. In taverns in Haarlem and other towns these contracts passed from hand to hand at rising prices. In early February 1637 an auction failed to find bidders, and confidence went.

Where the tulips came from

Tulips are wild plants of Central Asia and were garden flowers of the Ottoman court long before Europe knew them. They reached western Europe in the mid sixteenth century, and the botanist Carolus Clusius planted a collection at Leiden in the 1590s. The flamed patterns that buyers paid so much for were caused by a virus spread by aphids, which also weakened the bulb. That made the finest tulips slow to multiply and impossible to breed to order.

What historians say now

The popular account comes largely from moralising pamphlets printed just after the crash and from a nineteenth-century book on crowd follies. Later research in Dutch archives, notably by the historian Anne Goldgar, found that the trade involved a fairly small circle of merchants and craftsmen, that most contracts were never paid in full, and that few people were ruined. The Dutch economy carried on. The bulb trade itself survived and grew into the industry of today.

How to take part

1. See seventeenth-century tulip paintings and tulip books in Dutch museums such as the Rijksmuseum and the Frans Hals Museum.
2. Visit the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, where Clusius's garden has been reconstructed.
3. Look for modern striped tulips sold as Rembrandt tulips. Their pattern is bred in and virus free.

The flowers

TulipSpring-blooming bulbs with showy, cup-shaped flowers in many coloursDidier's tulipThe classic tall tulip behind most garden and cut-flower varieties

Also part of it, and being written: Semper Augustus, Hyacinth.

Sources and further reading

• Tulip mania on Wikipedia