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Most of us think of Holland when we think of tulips. Holland is the world centre for tulip growing. This was not always so. The tulip comes from Turkey and other parts of Asia. Once upon a time, this lovely flower was literally worth its weight in gold.  


The botanical name for a tulip is Tulipa. This comes from "tulpen", the Turkish word for a turban. In the past, people thought a tulip looked a little like this form of traditional Turkish headdress.

Tulips originally bloomed in the high mountains of Turkey and Asia. During the winter, the snow on the mountain slopes protects the bulbs from severe cold.  Carolus Clusius, a Dutch botanist, received some tulip bulbs from Turkey. He started growing the precious plants in his own garden in the small town of Leiden. As a scientist, Clusius studied the tulip bulbs purely to understand how plants grow and reproduce. He was not interested in sharing the lovely flowers or their bulbs with other gardeners. However, Clusius’s neighbours were desperate to get their hands on his flowers.  Eventually, they stole some bulbs so they could grow their own. This proved to be the start of Holland’s modern, multi-billion dollar tulip trade!

Until the 16th century, tulips were relatively unknown in Europe. However, by the 17th century, the flower became a status symbol, indicating both wealth and good taste. The value of tulips rocketed. This gave birth to what we now call "tulip mania", the urge to own a tulip. At the height of tulip mania, tulips changed hands for fabulous sums of money. In Holland, records show one tulip bulb being sold in the early 1600s for "a load of grain, four oxen, twelve sheep, five pigs, six barrels of fine drink, two barrels of butter, one thousand pounds of cheese, a suit of clothes and a silver beaker". Tulip owners displayed their tulip bulbs and not the flowers. They did this for the simple reason that they thought the bulbs were too valuable to plant.