History of tulips in Netherlands

The first European cultivation of the tulips as a garden flower occurred in the Netherlands in 16th century. 

Tulips originally came from Turkey. The Turks were known to cultivate tulips as early as AD 1000. According to Persian folklore, the first red tulips sprang the earth where a grief-stricken man, on hearing of his lover’s death, hacked himself to bits with an ax.

In the following century, the early enthusiasm for the new flowers triggered a speculative frenzy now known as tulipomania.

Carolus Clusius (1526-1609)., head of botanist at the University of Leiden, planted the first tulips in the Netherlands in 1593.

The tulips were given by De Busbecq, the ambassador to the court of Sultan Suleiman in Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Empire.

In the early years, bulbs were given and traded by botanies and collectors around Europe who where fascinated by their beauty.

By 1630 breeders had developed thirteen distinct groups of tulips, and many hundred of named cultivars. It led to the famous tulip-swindle on the first half of the seventeenth century, the buying and selling of samples that had never existed, a bubble trade that was modeled of the scenes enacted on the Pairs Exchange a century later, and of modern speculation.
History of tulips in Netherlands