Tulipomania: Going mad over Tulips

17th Century Holland!! Now that was the time and place to be. It was the Golden era when the Dutch were rejoicing in peace and Holland was gaining popularity all over the world for its beautiful art, innovative scientific research and growing cultured society. Amid this cacophony of all around success a strikingly beautiful flower saturated with intense colours sneaked into Holland. It's path was traced from Turkey to Amsterdam via Vienna. Sometimes as a royal gift, sometimes a stolen bulb the Tulip somehow entered Holland and established it's presence there like no other flower.

In the Golden age it became the status symbol of prosperity for wealthy tradesmen and thus people started planting acres and acres of Tulip bulbs to trade and as a display of their richness.

These Tulips with intense single colour petals were already a hype but suddenly the tulip market saw a curious mix of flowers with variegated petals. These flowers were exotic looking with a fascinating mix of colours where the monotonous single colour was broken by a vivid streak of contrasting colours. 

Sometimes the red had a single streak of striking yellow coursing through, sometimes the pink had lines of white coursing all over the petals and sometimes the colours were so mixed up that one streak seems to be giving rise to another.

These novel looking tulips were formed because of a viral infection. Imagine that, becoming more beautiful on getting infected by a virus!! I usually get a runny nose and dull skin!!! This virus called 'Tulip Mosaic Virus' broke the monotone into 2 or more colours thus giving an exotic looking variegated variety. These 'broken' tulips held such fascination that each bulb was traded for hundreds of gold bullions. They were really hard to come by also, in a monotone field of single toned flowers one or two flowers whose bulbs got infected used to break. Such rarity and such exotic colours made them stand out from the rest.

This viral infection although made the tulip stand out and increased its price a thousand fold as more and more people coveted it, it also decreased its inherent strength. The broken tulips were not able to set seeds the only way to replicate these was through the offsets or bulbs. Soon as the century came to an end so did this tulip mania. The variagated varieties so flamboyant and coveted soon disappered as they weakened more and more courtesy of the offsets. And in the end all one us left was the simple, monotonous, field full of healthy tulips!!!

That's the tragedy of human nature where people coveted the one broken tulip for it's exotic nature forgetting it's weakened strength and bet bullions of gold on it...eventually leading to the financial ruin of those misguided humans who saw something special in something so fickle.

...one in a million...

...The Broken Tulip...