bulb

The stairwell was lit by a single bulb.

Electric light bulbs don’t give quite the same effect as sunlight streaming through stained-glass but it’s close.

If you live in a cold area, a tender bulb will need special care when the growing season is over.

And bust it did, when one cold February morning in 1637, a group of bulb traders got together and discovered that suddenly there were no bidders.

But it was all pure speculation because as I said, there was no way to know if the bulb was really going to produce the variety, the color that was promised.

As demand grew, people began selling promissory notes guaranteeing the future delivery of prized tulip bulbs.

One particular tulip bulb was sold and exchanged for a small ship.

Well, according to records, one tulip bulb was worth 24 tons of wheat, or a thousand pounds of cheese.

The first bulbs to show up in the Netherlands, the merchant who received them roasted and ate them!

And the Turks often gave the Europeans tulip bulbs as gifts which they would carry home with them.

Some bulbs, even while still in the ground, were sold for as much as you would pay for a house at the time.

And since you didn't really know when you bought a bulb if the colors would break, well, Dutch speculators invested hand over fist and drove prices sky high.

Color breaking happened in just two or three out of a hundred bulbs and seemingly just by chance.

But in the early 17th century, as more bulbs were produced there, you'd think the prices would come down.

And since these bulbs remain viable for quite a long time, even out of the ground, they can be stored or transported long distances without much of a problem, which helps explain the spread of tulip cultivation.

With the smaller bulbs it takes maybe a couple of years.

A large bulb can produce a flower the very next year.

And although as it flowers the old bulb shrivels to almost nothing, the plant produces another large bulb and maybe two, three, four smaller ones to take its place, and while tulips take up to seven years to bloom if you start from seeds.

A tulip, of course, is typically grown from an underground bulb.

These cells pick up odor molecules high in the nose and transmit scent messages to the brain’s olfactory bulb, he explained.