THE BEAUTY
OF TULIPS
G'day folks,
There are many beautiful flowers in the world, but few have ever
competed with the abundance and pure beauty that the tulip represents. This
gorgeous and colorful flower has many festivals in its honor held around the
world. Because it can be grown in so many bright colors, it makes for some
beautiful celebrations.
Colorful fields of tulips as far as the eye can see. These were shot in British
Columbia, Canada. Many places around the world celebrate tulip festivals. These
fragrant and beautiful flowers used to be so popular that a phrase was coined:
"Tulip Mania".
In 17th century Holland, tulips were so important that you could measure
someone's social status by the exotic tulips they cultivated. At the peak of
this 'tulip mania', individual exotic tulips would be sold for more than ten
times the annual salary of a skilled worker.
Purple and red, green and pink. A celebration of colors. Not all tulips are
fragrant, but all of them can be eaten, and indeed during WWII and the 1944
Dutch famine, people survived by eating tulips and sugar beets.
At one point, the tulip was the most expensive flower in the world. At one
point during the height of Europe’s tulip mania, a single Viceroy tulip bulb
was purchased for two lasts of wheat, four lasts of rye, four fat oxen, eight
fat swine, 12 fat sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four casks of beer, two tons of
butter, a complete bed, a suit of clothes and a silver drinking cup!
The Canadian Tulip Festival, which claims to be the world’s largest tulip
festival, is a major event held annually each May in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
During World War II, the Dutch Royal Family took refuge in Canada. Princess Margriet
of the Netherlands was born at Ottawa Civic Hospital in 1943, and the Canadian
government declared the land to be extraterritorial. This was done to ensure
that the princess would have Dutch citizenship. Every year since, Queen Juliana
and the royal family after her death have sent tulip bulbs for the festival.
Clancy's comment: Magnificent colours.
I'm ...
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