The Netherlands and tulips are inextricably connected to each other. But do tulips actually originate from the Netherlands? And how many tulips are exported every year? Read all about tulips in these seven interesting facts.
- Did you know that although Vincent van Gogh had an extraordinary fascination with nature but he never painted a single tulip in his life? Yet there is a tulip named after the famous painter. The ‘Vincent van Gogh tulip’ is reddish-brown and grows to a height of about 50-60cm.
- Did you know that a tulip mania took place in the Netherlands in the 17th century? Some species of tulips costed more than a house and having tulips in your home back then was as impressive as having a Ferrari in your garage today.
- Did you know that no less than 2 billion tulips from the Netherlands are exported all around the world every year?
- Did you know that you each year on the third Saturday of January you can pick a beautiful bouquet of tulips for free at Amsterdam‘s Dam Square? To celebrate the launch of the tulip season everybody is invited to come and pick tulips in a specially constructed garden with about 200,000 colorful tulips.
- Did you know that the Dutch Royal Family and the Dutch Bulb Growers Assocation each send 10,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa, Canada every year to show our gratitude for the liberation during World War II?
- Did you know that windmills, tulips and wooden shoes are not originally from the Netherlands? The Persians already had fixed windmills in the 7th century, tulips were domesticaded by the Turks and nobody knows exactly who invented wooden shoes but they have been around longer than the Netherlands.
- Did you know that tulips come in pretty much every color of the rainbow, except blue? Pure blue tulips only exist by paint or Photoshop. Several tulips have ‘blue’ in their name but they are actually more purple than blue.
