Flowering tulips are a smashing gift to present to a cherished loved one on Valentine’s Day! But never was there such a rush for this bulb, as during the period of “Tulip Mania.”

The historical drama, “Tulip Fever,” offers a glimpse into this 17th century time frame, when tulips were highly sought as luxury items and purchased at exorbitant prices.

Tulip Mania occurred during the Dutch Golden Age, when contract prices for tulip bulbs, having been recently introduced and found fashionable, reached extraordinarily high levels and then dramatically collapsed in 1637. History reveals several conditions that set the stage for the obsession, that is, explosion in international commerce bringing enormous fortune to an emerging merchant class coinciding with labor shortages and increased wages.

Such a time stimulated passion for exotic goods from the Ottoman Empire and farther east. These goods, including tulip bulbs, fetched significantly higher prices. When Dutch botanist Carolus Clusius established a botanical garden, tulip popularity grew. And when he wrote the first major book on tulips, his garden began being raided, with his bulbs being stolen, on a regular basis. Tulip bulbs were traded on the stock market with contracts. Instead of buying a bulb, someone was buying the right to acquire the bulb after it bloomed in the spring. The contracts were a form of currency. As people rushed to buy bulbs, the bulb contracts became so expensive that they were used as money until the market in tulip bulbs crashed.

Of particular interest to the tulip traders were “broken bulbs” or those tulips with petals displaying a striped, multicolor pattern rather than a solid color. The pattern was later found to be the result of a mosaic virus and indicative of sickly, less-likely-to-reproduce bulbs. But the growing demand for these rare bulbs led to the study of ways to reproduce this characteristic in a healthy way.

Since tulips are not native to the land, why have tulips performed so well in The Netherlands, as to become known as the country’s national symbol? Tulips grow well in maritime areas with sandy-clay soil conditions and relatively mild winters, with summers that are not too hot and humid. The Dutch ditch network also serves as an effective plant irrigation system, further supporting the flower’s growth.

Today, it is often the case that we treat tulips as annuals, with plans to replace the bulbs each year. Gardeners in this region of the United States often prefer to plant daffodils, instead of tulips, as they are a reliable outdoor flowering bulb alternative that also have the added benefit of being deer-resistant. They then choose to purchase greenhouse-grown tulips and place them indoors, instead of in their gardens, as a way to celebrate the coming spring from the comfort of their homes.

E-search Cooperative Extension publications to discover ways of forcing bulbs into early indoor bloom and for the maintenance of flowering bulbs.

Kristi Hendricks is a graduate of Shepherd College and West Virginia University and a Master Gardener with the Virginia Cooperative Extension. She can be reached at belowthejames@yahoo.com.