Those who think Nasdaq stocks are the bee's knees might care to contemplate the tulip. After all, 363 years ago, this simple flower was the object of the largest speculative
bubble the world probably had ever seen.
Equally, anybody who believes the war
against narcotics should know no bounds
might be interested to consider what a
comparable, if much less visible, international
campaign, replete with guns and attack dogs,
has done to those who traffic in another
flower-the exotic or-chid.
These two revealing books, by Mike Dash,
historical and often scholarly on tulips, and
Eric Hansen, more contemporary and
anecdotal on orchids, should satisfy the
curious. Both are lucidly written accounts, the
first a social and financial history, the second a
window on a world that is rarely opened.
It was the Turks who brought the tulip to Europe from the central Asian
mountains. Omar Khayyam wrote verses describing it as the perfect symbol
of feminine beauty: the great victory in 1389 of the Ottoman Empire over the
Serbs at Kosovo (yes, that Kosovo) was celebrated by a Muslim chronicler
with tulip metaphors.
In 1562, the first bulbs made it to Antwerp, where a Flemish merchant,
thinking they were Turkish onions, ate a few and planted the rest. The
subsequent flowers naturally came to the attention of the leading botanist of
his time, Carolus Clusius (born Charles de L'Escluse in France). The tulip
quickly became an object of desire for wealthy Europeans, but a curious
aberration for the supposedly sober, God-fearing Dutch.
The market in tulips was initially confined to connoisseurs, always in search of
more exotic varieties, like the ultimate Semper Augustus. But florists, trading
in taverns, increased both supply and demand -- for individual flowers and,
eventually, for quantities in bulk. By the 1630s, they had even created a
futures market on the Dutch bourses (although this was prohibited by law).
The highest reliably recorded price for a single bulb reached 5,200 guilders
early in 1637 (in comparison, a small ship could be built for G500, while
1,000 pounds of cheese cost only G120). More eye-catching was the run-up
in prices: A parcel of common or garden variety tulips brought just G29 in
September 1636; by the following January, it was fetching G1,200.
And then, in February, the bubble burst, with the exhaustion of the supply of
bulbs and money, "the twin fuels of the flower mania," as Dash puts it. The
G5,000 bulb was later sold for G50; a G1,000 bed of tulips for only G6. A
decree in 1638 stipulated that buyers could cancel out- standing contracts by
paying just 3.5% of their original purchase price. Sic transit tulips, though the
Turks got overexcited by the flower again early in the 18th century.
Today, orchids, with an exotic history comparable to the tulip, are just as
ubiquitous, if harder to grow. There are, according to Eric Hansen, about
25,000 naturally occurring species and more than 100,000 hybrids in
cultivation. The worldwide retail business is conservatively estimated at $9
billion a year. The U.S. alone has over 400,000 orchid collectors, and Turkey
specializes in ice cream made from dried orchid tubers.
Yet it is considered a plant in peril; or, to be precise, the international trade in
orchids now rests under the jurisdiction of Cites, the Geneva-based
organization far better known for its work in protecting endangered species. It
is the controversial and intrusive task of the "orchid police" (Cites officials and
cooperative national authorities) that is the constant thread running through this
book.
The author's sympathies clearly lie with the orchid collectors he tracks down.
They tend toward the eccentric, like the octogenarian lady in Seattle; the
elusive Henry Azadehdel, jailed in Britain for smuggling orchids; and Dr.
Guido Josef Braem, as widely suspected of smuggling as he is admired as a
scientist and conservationist.
It is Braem who makes the most powerful case against the Cites orchid
regime. "If you cannot or will not protect the natural environment where those
species are to be found, there should be no talk about the legality or illegality
of taking a few plants from their environment and putting them into
cultivation." His argument, of course, depends on the definition of "a few."
-- Reviewed by Jurek Martin |
