Ask most people, “Where do tulips come from?” They would say Holland, and indeed, they would be right. Tulip festivals and songs all celebrate the splendour of the Dutch tulip fields and festivals.

But did you know that this flower came originally from Turkey and was made famous in the 18th century during the Ottoman Empire? This was a time of peace and prosperity, art and literature, and tulip cultivation was equated with status, privilege, and prosperity. However, embittered at Sultan Ahmet III’s extravagant spending of so much time and public money on his tulip gardens at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, angry crowds of residents stormed the palace, forced him out, killed the prime minister and burned the gardens in revenge.

Despite all this, the tulip is still a feature of Turkish culture and has decorated the Topkapi Palace and gardens. Even today, tulip designs appear in art, architecture and design, from pottery, ceramics, paintings, stone and wood inscriptions, swords, carpets, textiles, and jewellery and tulip motifs have decorated palaces, mosques, fountains, tombstones and robes and shoes of Ottoman Empire sultans. Tulips, native to Central Asia, which grow wild in almost every region, were reportedly first brought to the Netherlands in 1593.

Today, apart from the dominant tulip culture, Holland’s massive 518,000 sq m floriculture market at Aalsmeer is the biggest grower, importer and exporter of cut flowers, shrubs and plants in the world. It handles some 11.5 billion Euros in trade value, with cut flowers representing around four billion Euros, the biggest export market being the USA at over two billion Euros. The famous “Dutch auction” is used in many different businesses. The auctioneer begins each sale with an agreed-upon high asking price and lowers it until a bid is made or a reserve price is reached. Prices are shown on a clock, and buyers typically have a few seconds to make a bid.