The Obsession

In the 1630s, the Netherlands was gripped by what historians now call Tulip Mania, arguably the world’s first recorded speculative financial bubble. Tulips had arrived in Europe from the Ottoman Empire in the late 1500s, and the Dutch became absolutely captivated by them. The more exotic the colour pattern, the more people lost their minds over them.

The most prized variety, streaked with flames of colour on their petals, turned out to be caused by a virus. Mosaic virus, spread by aphids, was unknowingly infecting the bulbs and creating those wild, unpredictable colour breaks that collectors were willing to pay fortunes for. People were essentially trading diseased plants. They just didn’t know it yet.

The Crash

At the peak of the mania in February 1637, tulip contracts were changing hands multiple times a day. People sold their homes, their land, their life savings, all for bulbs they often never even saw. Then, almost overnight, buyers stopped showing up to an auction in Haarlem, and the entire market collapsed. Fortunes evaporated in days.

It was the first time the world learned that the value of something is only what someone else is willing to pay for it, a lesson we’ve had to relearn with every bubble since.

The Science Behind the Beauty

The irony is that those spectacular broken-colour tulips, the ones that caused all the madness,  were actually sick. The mosaic virus weakens the bulb over generations, and those varieties eventually died out entirely. The most coveted thing in the world was quietly destroying itself.

Today’s tulips are healthy, carefully bred, and gloriously unaware of their complicated history. They sit in a vase on my kitchen counter on a Monday morning, costing almost nothing, worth everything they need to be.

That feels like enough.

Corina.