Ten Surprising Facts about Tulips

The tulip originated in Turkey and was named after the traditional tulip-shaped turban.
Sixty percent of the world’s bulbs come from the Netherlands and three-quarters of all global trade in flower bulbs passes through NL.
Export value of Dutch bulbs is approx. 600 million euros annually.
It takes 7-12 years to cultivate a flowering bulb from a seed. This slow growing process partly fuelled tulip mania in the 17th Century.
In the early 1600s tulip mania gripped the Dutch. Bulbs were traded for extortionate amounts of money. Often the bulbs were ‘virtual,’ passing from speculator to speculator, but never physically changing hands.
The much-coveted ‘broken’ variety (with striped petals) which fetched the highest prices during tulip mania were the result of a virus in the plant.
The world’s first economic bubble burst in February 1637 in Haarlem, possibly triggered by the outbreak of bubonic plague in the city.
Author Deborah Moggach wrote ‘Tulip Fever’ which will be released later this year as a film. I highly recommend this novel if you like your fact peppered with fiction!
In WWII, many Dutch citizens were forced to eat tulip bulbs during the famine of 1944. This period is known in Dutch as the hongerwinter. Usual food supplies were either blocked or diverted to Germany. Eighteen thousand people died of malnutrition during the exceptionally hard winter.
The Keukenhof attracts around 800,000 foreign visitors each year. You have till 17 May 2015 to visit this cornucopia of flowers covering 70 acres!

About susancarey

Angela writes using pseudonym, Susan Carey. She has dual nationality, GB/NL and lives in Nijmegen. Susan has had short fiction published on multiple platforms and was a runner-up in the 2018 and 2017 Casket of Fictional Delights Flash Competitions. Her writing has also been published and performed by amongst others: Mslexia, Liars’ League, Reflex Fiction, the Casket and of course the wonderful Writers Abroad. In 2020 she published her short story collection, Healer. Tweets at @su_carey

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6 Responses to Ten Surprising Facts about Tulips

Jo Lamb says:

May 11, 2015 at 5:10 pm

What wonderful pictures, so colourful and 600 million euros? Want to be a tulip farmer… great blog 🙂

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- susancarey says:
  
  May 11, 2015 at 5:28 pm
  
  Thanks, Jo. Glad you liked it and the Keukenhof flowers have to be seen to be believed!
  
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Jill Brown says:

May 11, 2015 at 9:28 pm

Wow! It has always been on my to-do list to come to see the tulips in Holland. Looks like I’m too late this year but thanks for rekindling my desire!

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susancarey says:

May 11, 2015 at 9:36 pm

It really is worth it, Jill! Around the end of April you can also see all the bulb fields in the surrounding area in bloom. I was a bit late for those but heard it was amazing.

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pfornari says:

July 6, 2015 at 5:18 pm

The Keukenhof was one of the very first places I ever visited in The Netherlands…just stunning!

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- susancarey says:
  
  July 6, 2015 at 7:29 pm
  
  Yes, it’s so beautiful it’s dreamlike. Hope you can make it back there sometime:)
  
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