Sue planted these gorgeous tulips to provide colour for the April open day and they are blooming on schedule!
The National Trust provide a lovely history of tulips on their website, charting their origin as wild flowers in Asia, through the Dutch Tulipmania which climaxed in 1637, with the futures market for the most prized bulbs reaching as much as 10,000 guilders each – the price of a house in a fashionable district in Amsterdam! The market crashed in February that year and subsequently there has been disagreement about the economics of the episode – was it a bubble or efficient market pricing, as the law changed from futures contracting to options contracting?
I can’t find a date for the creation of the Prinz Armin tulip or a story for the naming. They were registered by a Dutch grower. They were presumably named after Prinz Armin of Lippe, a german principality which was abolished in 1918. The Prinz renounced his claim in 1953 and died in 2015.
