..In fact this was the extraordinary price – worth 2,500 florins (about $1,000) at the time – that one man paid for a single tulip bulb in Holland in the 1630’s. Even higher sums than that changed hands at the height of what has come to be known as “Tulipomania” – a range for trading in tulip bulbs that swept the nation between 1634 and 1637…How did such an extraordinary state of affairs come to be?

Hardly anyone escaped for fever: merchants, noblemen, farmers, chimney sweeps – all were caught up by the fact that it was suddenly possible to become very rich, very quickly, by owning even one of these humble bulbs.

Tulips were still comparatively rare in 17th century Holland, and as early as 1623 unusual ones were fetching high price. But during the mania of the 1630’s, prices reached astronomical levels because cultivated tulips were found to have an extraordinary property. Any tulip bulb that usually produces a flower of a single color will eventually “break” and produce a flower, sometimes stunningly beautiful, of two or more colors. Once this happens, the change is permanent: the bulb will continue to produce a multicolor flower.