Holland celebrate 400 years of tulip growing

By Laurence Blairon [10 pts ML]

THE HAGUE, (AFP): Holland this year celebrates 400 years of tulip growing, a hobby that sprouted a multi-million dollar industry and became a symbol for the country.

More than a million tourists are expected to descend this year on the Keukenhof, the country's most celebrated gardens, located half way between The Hague and Amsterdam, for the annual display of flowering tulips which lasts from April till May.

"There are few people abroad who can place our country on a map, but if you say the word tulip, they will answer Holland," said to Jan Cornelissen, director of the Netherlands Tourist Office.

"The tulip has become our national symbol, just as much as windmills and wooden clogs," he said.

Holland now produces some three billion bulbs annually, or 80 percent of the world's tulips, but the flower was a complete unknown here until 400 years ago.

It was in 1594 that a Belgian botanist, by the name of Carolus Clusius, first grew the flowers here, after importing the bulbs by stagecoach from Turkey.

The flowers which blossomed in Leiden University's medicinal garden were an immediate hit.

So much so that when the botanist refused to sell any of the bulbs to local people, they simply stole them, so kicking off an industry which is today worth about one billion guilders (US$530 million) in both bulbs and cut flowers.

In the early 17th century, the dry and sandy moorland near Leiden and Haarlem became home to the tulips, but the rarity of the bulbs made for high prices.

New colors

In 1637, one single bulb was sold for 10,000 guilders, or the price of a canal-fronting house in Amsterdam.

In the 18th and 19th century, the crossing of natural varieties originating in central Asia brought new colors.

French novelist Alexandre Dumas dreamed up a story about an imaginary black tulip, but reality is now catching up with fiction.

In 1986, a company manufactured a dark purple tulip, very nearly black, by crossing a "Night Queen variety" with a "Wienerwald".

The as yet unnamed tulip is not expected to be marketed before the turn of the century.

During World War II, when occupying German forces cut off railway transportation, starving the local population, people even took to eating the bulbs.

"Grilled, boiled, mashed up or as a soup, the bulb tastes of sour chestnuts and leaves an aftertaste of mold," according to Liesbeth van der Horst from the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam. "But it has high nutritional value."

Always seeking new markets, tulip growers who boast of some 3,000 varieties launched the "dry freeze tulip" in 1977, which can be made to flower at any time of the year. Simply take out of the freezer and allow it to sit for two weeks.

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