Man, I love tulips.

Having just gotten our latest shipment of tulips from Holland, I'm ready to fight anyone who doesn't like tulips. 

It's easy to see how the world's first speculative bubble was created in the Dutch tulip market in 1637. I have to admit, I would have lost my shirt - or wooden shoes.

The hues of these flowers are so deliciously intense you could just take a bite out of them. 

Come visit our tulips at Tiger Lily Flowers on Cedar Lane in Teaneck or visit us on our Facebook page.

The Botany of Desire

 Having run through most of the Netflix catalogue of films that I have either seen or dismissed, I was recently piqued by a documentary first released by PBS entitled, "The Botany of Desire," based on the book of the same name by Michael Pollan. In short, this brilliant doc elegantly demonstrates how four plant species have manipulated human beings to serve their evolutionary ends. "Little Shop of Horrors'" Audrey II turns out to be more terrestrial in origin. Not so blood-thirsty, either, but from a plant's point of view, just as greedy and self-serving. The apple, the tulip, the potato and cannabis are all thriving species by having developed strategies to disperse their genes by appealing to our species' aesthetic, gustatory, economic, and hedonistic desires. (Wiley lil' devils...)
The film is so well done, you'll forget you're watching a documentary (or PBS), and you'll come away with some great trivia about such things as 1. Where did apples originate? (Answer: Not the Garden of Eden.) 2. What caused the world's first capitalistic speculative bubble? (Answer: The Tulip, 1634.) 3. What plant changed human history more than any other? (Answer: The Potato. Providing enough calories in a half acre to sustain a family for an entire year.) 4. What research has been profoundly advanced by pot? (Answer: The neurophysiology of memory.)
I confess, it is the first time that I have thought about being manipulated by a plant. And I'm a florist.

You will really enjoy this film.
View "The Botany of Desire" online...

Tulip Mania and Speculative Bubbles (the undeserving tulip)

Most students of economics know that capitalism was born in the Netherlands during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Holland, in fact, birthed the world's first commodity futures market, and logically, the world's first speculative bubble. The commodity that caused a financial frenzy wasn't gold, silver, tobacco or silk.

It was the tulip.

Tulips were highly valued and sought after as symbols of affluence. Because their bulbs reproduced cloned buds and could be dug up and transported at the end of their season, their "futures" could be traded and speculated upon. In 1636, a highly prized variety of tulip was discovered and cultivated (it was infected with a mosaic virus that gave the flower brilliant striations of color). During a lull in the 30 Years War, the French entered the tulip market, and the bidding on the mosaic-infected varieties took off. The price of the bulbs at its height was 150 times the average yearly earnings for a skilled craftsman or guild member (they formed the majority of speculators). The frenzy became known as the Tulip Mania of 1636, and the flower has become a symbol of rampant speculative fever ever since.

In our era, the symbol should no longer be the undeserving tulip. It rightfully should be the Bush.