One man’s tulip, another man’s onion (Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog)

An interesting history-related post from Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog:

Tulip production was, in early Modern Europe, a challenging affair. For one the tulip itself was not an indigenous plant. It had come, with so many other items – including curiously goods from the New World – through the Ottoman Empire.

Next, growing a tulip from seed takes from six to twelve years. These were not black orchids but still… They demanded a lot of care and fancy green fingering to arrive at maturity. Beachcombing thinks of the prices for a bonsai tree today.

Exotic, difficult to grow and yet strangely beautiful to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europeans, who had never ...

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