Spring snowflake - Leucojum vernum

Lack of regulation and poor quality control were just a couple of the details that led to the abrupt crash in February 1637. Tulipomania was the original market bust--people were ruined, debts went unpaid. It was a disaster similar to the stock-market crash of 1929. A brief resurrection of the mania occurred 65 years later in Istanbul, and while it was not the financial obsession Holland experienced, it led to the creation of standards in flower shape and increased the development of new types. You don't need to be obsessed to enjoy this book--an interest in tulips, history, and the futures market ensures that this will be a remarkable read. --Jill LightnerBook Description: A New York Times Bestseller

“A delightful read.” — Wall Street Journal

This is the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted — and beautiful — commodity in Europe. Historian Mike Dash vividly narrates the story of this amazing flower and the colorful cast of characters — Turkish sultans, Yugoslav soldiers, French botanists, and Dutch tavern keepers — who were centuries apart historically and worlds apart culturally, but who all had one thing in common: tulipomania.
Publisher: Thorndike Press (2001-08)
Price: $29.95

Each specimen was chosen for its importance as a superb example of the flower's form and characteristics, and each photograph, taken at the peak of the flower's beauty, becomes a stunning portrait. The "story" behind 500 tulips is told as well, from a tulip's parentage to the history of its cultivation and discovery.
Publisher: Artisan (1999-01-10)
Price: $65.00

Pavord's passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, where she tells of scrambling across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip. The story of the discovery of this tulip leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful, enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the object of affection--in this case, the tulip--from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul in the 18th century to its present cultivation by the Wakefield Tulip Society.

Along the way, incredible stories of people's investments in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of a unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colors are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant but produces its gorgeous hues. The tulipomania that gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colors imaginable. Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects. Buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again. --Jerry BrottonProduct Description: