If you are visiting the Netherlands in the springtime, one thing becomes overtly apparent – it’s tulip growing season. Row upon row of the national flower carpet regions of the country with shocks of vibrant colour. Holland allocates approximately 29,500 acres of farmland to tulips alone – the equivalent area of two Manhattan Islands. It is a little known fact that tulips continue to grow after they are cut, a feature that makes the popular blooms ideal for shipping long distances. And Holland exports upwards to three billion flowers each year, in every imaginable colour including black. Over time, the flower’s colours have come to represent a range of different emotions or sentiments. Red is for love, white for forgiveness, orange for happiness, yellow for hope and pink for confidence.
Believe it or not, the tulip is not originally from Holland. Its roots are in Turkey, dating back to the Ottoman Empire. The word “tulip” emerged in the 1550s and is derived from the Persian word for “turban” due to the flower’s resemblance to a man’s headdress. In 1637, at the peak of the tulip’s desirability, bulbs were such a sought-after status symbol that people paid outrageous sums of money for them. One unique specimen, the Semper Augustus, fetched the most money of them all – upwards of 10,000 guilders for a single bulb. To put that into perspective, a stately home on a fashionable Amsterdam canal during that period cost the same amount. Tulips, to this day, remain a perennial favourite. Thousands of enthusiasts make the pilgrimage to the “flower shop of the world” each spring to witness the blooming of this simple yet elegant specimen.