Our Love of Flowers

Our Love of Flowers

In this lecture, we are looking at three stories – two of them very strange – about the human relationship with flowers: one is an adventure, another concerns love and the third is economic!

The Dangerous Hobby of Orchid Hunting

There are not many hobbies that are as respectable as gardening. It’s a quiet interest that’s more popular with the elderly than teenagers or young adults. So, it is, perhaps, surprising to learn that collecting one special type of flower was a dangerous job that cost many professional ‘orchid hunters’ their lives.

It all happened because of the love – some would say the madness – that wealthy, nineteenth-century Englishmen showed for these flowers. Their passion even had a name, ‘orchidelirium’, that suggested mental illness. These fanatics sent orchid hunters to almost every part of the world to try to find new varieties.

But it’s probably better to start a couple of thousand years earlier or you’ll get the idea that orchids are a modern invention. In fact, orchids have a much longer history than just a hundred or so years. In Roman times, they were extremely popular, but were discouraged as Christianity became the religion of the western world. The reason was that the flowers were linked to sex. In fact, their name comes from the Ancient Greek word for testicles (because of the strange shape of the roots of some species).

In Greek mythology, the creation of the orchid is explained by a story. A young man, Orchis, was partying in the forest. He drank too much and raped a woman who was the servant of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus. The god’s followers were so angry about this that they attacked him and tore him to pieces. Orchis’ father prayed that the gods would give his much-loved son back to him, but they changed his corpse into a flower instead.

It was not until many centuries later that orchids were once again centre stage. People started to cultivate them in Europe about two hundred years ago. However, there are only about forty orchid families that grow on the continent or in Central Asia and, so, rich gardeners with a special interest in the plants paid for ‘orchid hunters’ to travel all over the world to find new ones. They were not just working in the interests of science. Orchid hunting was very competitive and so the journeys to find them were also secretive. It was quite usual for collectors to lie about where they found new orchids because they could sell them in London for enormous prices.

In those days, very little was known about how to cultivate orchids and most died in Europe after journeys of many thousands of miles from some of the most distant parts of the world because nobody knew how to look after them. In fact, half the number that had been collected actually died before they ever reached Europe. Slowly, however, by getting more information on orchids in their natural habitat, gardeners learnt how to keep the plants alive and even to grow them. But there was still great demand for unknown varieties and the highly risky profession of ‘orchid hunter’ was invented.

Of course, the orchid family does not come from one special place. There are around 25,000 species of orchid – that’s twice as many as there are bird species and four times as many as mammals – and they grow just about everywhere. (Orchids have been found in the Arctic circle, by the way, and in southern Argentina, near the Antarctic.)

However, they are most common in hot and wet parts of Asia, where there are nearly three hundred different families, sub-Saharan Africa (with around 250), and in Latin America (where there are approximately 230). But you can come across orchid families in Europe, the US and Canada, Australia and cooler parts of Asia too. And let’s not forget the 100,000 types that gardeners have cultivated by mixing one or more natural orchids.

So, if there were so many orchids in so many different places, why was it so risky to be an ‘orchid hunter’? Part of the answer is to do with the areas of the world where the rarest orchids grew. For instance, eight ‘orchid hunters’ set off in 1901 to find new orchid species in the Philippines: only one returned to Europe alive (although he did bring back seven thousand new species). Five of his friends simply disappeared; another was eaten by a tiger and the seventh was burnt to death when he – somehow – became covered in oil.

In Papua New Guinea, five orchid hunters were taken prisoner but only three were still alive when they were rescued by the Indonesian Army. The other two had their heads cut off. There are many other stories of accidents in Colombia, where well-known ‘orchid hunters’ died of disease, drowning and hunger.

But the dangers of the lands where the orchids grew were only part of the story. Another risk was from other ‘orchid hunters’. Competition was so violent that the hunters’ employers often ordered them to do unbelievable things.

For example, one hunter, William Arnold, was nearly killed in a fight with another one. When he wrote to his employer to let him know, he was told to follow the man, collect the same species and then urinate on his competitors’ orchids so that they died. Obviously, after months of collecting the plants in very uncomfortable conditions, it would make anyone angry to find that all his orchids were dead. Perhaps, angry enough to kill.

Of course, all these stories are historical and looking for orchids in the twenty-first century cannot be as dangerous as it was a hundred and more years ago.

Or can it? Tom Hart Dyke is a plant hunter who was kidnapped by guerrillas in Latin America and kept prisoner for nine months in 2000 and 2001.

Of course, he was trying to find new species of orchids!

Roses – a Symbol of Love

Roses are the most popular flowers in the world and, more than any other, are a symbol of romance. On Valentine's Day, 14 February, each year, lovers all over the world receive a dozen red roses as a sure sign that they are forever in their partners’ hearts… even if for the rest of the year they are tied to the washing machine or argue night and day.

Roses have been with us for at least thirty-five million years, according to the fossil evidence. However, they have probably been cultivated for about five thousand and, first of all, in China. There are wild roses even today as far north as Alaska and as near the equator as Mexico, although they have been introduced to just about every country in the world by rose-lovers.

The Ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite gave roses her name, but it was the goddess of flowers, Chloris, who first made the rose. Greek mythology tells us that one day when Chloris was cleaning the forest, she found a dead nymph. She was so saddened by this waste of life that she called Aphrodite to give her great beauty and her name. Then she asked Dionysus, the god of wine, to make her smell lovely. Next, she arranged for other gods and goddesses to make her pretty, bright and happy. Finally, the west wind blew the clouds away so that Apollo, the god of the sun, could shine on her. And that is how we got the rose. Or, at least, that is the story that has come to us from the Ancient Greeks.  

The Romans opened rose gardens in their capital, put their petals in their wine and dropped them on the heads of their dinner guests. They painted roses on the ceilings of their dining rooms and the Latin phrase ‘sub rosa’ (‘under the rose’) means ‘secret’. In other words, guests should not discuss what they heard at the dinner table with outsiders. Newly-wed Roman couples had roses put on their heads at their wedding ceremonies. The Romans even used roses as a form of currency, paying for other goods in rosewater perfume. In fact, the Romans loved the flower so much that there were not enough plants. They forced poor farmers to grow more – instead of vegetables, corn and fruit – and this caused food shortages.

However, it was not just in Europe that the rose was popular. Rose petals have been found in the tombs of Ancient Egyptians. And there is a wonderful story from India of a contest between Vishnu, the protector of the world, and Brahma, its creator, about which was more beautiful, the rose or the lotus. However, Brahma, who had said that the lotus was the lovelier, did not really know what he was talking about, as he had never seen a rose. When he saw one, he immediately changed his mind and, to thank Vishnu for showing him such a beautiful flower, he made a bride for him, called Lakshmi from one hundred and eight large rose petals and a thousand and eight small ones.

The Arabs have a myth that is, perhaps, even more romantic. It goes like this. One night, a nightingale saw a white rose and fell in love with it. In those days, nightingales could only make a noise like every other bird, but her love for the rose was so great that she started to sing the charming song that we know today. But she did not stop there. She loved the rose so much that she pressed her heart to the rose and the thorns killed her. It was the nightingale’s blood that gave us red roses!

Although the rose was so much loved by the Greeks, Arabs, Hindus and Romans, there was a period of more than a thousand years after the end of the Roman Empire, around the year 400, when the popularity of the rose fell. It was not until the eighteenth century that roses were cultivated in Europe again – introduced from China this time. What’s more, it took another hundred years for the red rose, so important to lovers, to be produced. Until that time, roses were either white or pink.

It was the French who, about two hundred years ago, started to breed roses and, in the middle of the nineteenth century, made the first artificial rose by mixing two others. It was pink, but deep red, yellow, orange and even green roses soon followed. This was managed in a very basic way. The amateur rose breeder put two rose bushes of different colours into the same pot and hoped that they would breed. They did.

It was not just different colours that were new to Europe. The Chinese also brought ‘repeat blooms’, meaning that modern roses flower several times in the summer. Until the nineteenth century, a rose bush only produced one flower a year. When it died, there were no more flowers until the next summer.

Now, of course, roses are vital to the perfume industry. One hundred and fifty million plants are sold every year to gardeners for their homes or to farmers who sell the petals or flowers. There are also thirty thousand different kinds of roses, ten thousand of these are mixtures of other plants. Roses are used to make jam to put on your toast at breakfast. They are grown to make tea and different medicines for the stomach and for the skin. And, of course, they are more popular than ever for young lovers.

The Tulip and the First Speculation Bubble

The tulip had a long but unsurprising past before it arrived in Europe just after the middle of the sixteenth century. The flower originally grew in the wild in Central Asia but the Turks were cultivating it for its beauty by the year 1,000. In 1554, a European ambassador in Istanbul first saw the tulip and sent some seeds to a friend in Holland for his garden. By the beginning of the next century, everybody wanted the flowers. This was natural. Their flowers were brighter than any other and came in red, purple and pink.

In the early decades of the seventeenth century, tulips became more and more popular in Holland, especially if they had yellow or white stripes on them. In fact, the most expensive flowers had the most stripes on them. Three hundred years later, scientists realised that the patterns were, in fact, signs of virus in the tulip.

Under normal circumstances, tulip bulbs take at least seven years – and maybe as long as twelve – to grow from seeds and last only a few years. New bulbs can also be produced from shoots from the original bulb, but there are never more than two or three of these. They also take up to three years to flower. So, growing tulips is neither quick nor easy. However, the bulbs producing the striped flowers were especially difficult to grow, because the virus affected the bulb, not the seeds. So, to be sure of getting the prized stripes on the flower, cultivators could only use shoots. But there were very few of these from the diseased bulbs, as the virus weakened them. This made them even rarer.

Very soon, the wonderful striped tulip flowers in a garden became a status symbol, showing the owner’s wealth. This pushed prices higher and higher until a single bulb could be sold for more money than a house in the Dutch capital. From 1634, more and more people wanted to buy tulips and even sold their furniture to get the money to do so. But it was not so important to have the cash to buy them because bulbs that were still growing in the ground were sold before they produced flowers.

Sometimes, ownership of an underground bulb changed ten or more times in a day. And each time, the price was higher. It was not only striped bulbs, but also the more usual flowers, that sold for top prices. Tulip traders became hugely rich although no bulb actually changed hands.

From late 1636 to early 1637, people began to call the interest in the flowers ‘Tulipomania’, suggesting mental illness. The business began to be called "wind trade" in Dutch, as buyers were not trading anything, just a flower that people might see in the future. In other words, they were trading in wind.

In his book on the subject in 1841, the British journalist, Charles Mackay told many wild stories from the time, including one about a workman who saw a tulip bulb and grabbed it. The owner ran after him in the street but the thief ate it before he was caught, thinking it was an onion. Mackay reports that he was sent to prison for six months, but it is unlikely that the event took place because tulip bulbs taste nothing like onions and are, in fact, poisonous.

The Dutch government became more and more worried about ‘Tulipomania’ but could do nothing to stop the business, because it was private buying and selling. However, in February 1637, for the first time, tulip buyers in a Dutch town called Harlem did not go to market. We now believe that this was because there was plague in the town and people did not want to be in close contact with others because they were afraid of catching the disease.

However, news of the first unsuccessful sale of bulbs went from one Dutch town to another and people started to worry about the huge amounts of money they had spent on tulips.

Within a couple of weeks, they were worth only a tenth or even less of the money people had paid for them. Buyers refused to pay and Dutch judges said that the contracts they had signed were worthless because these were gambles – not business agreements.

 ‘Tulipomania’ was the first of many speculative bubbles and the term is now often applied to any market when prices are far higher than the real value of the product. Although Mackay’s book did a lot to make the tulip crisis well-known, many economists now think that it is not a very accurate description of what happened in seventeenth century Netherlands. However, there have been many other financial disasters which have happened since 1637 and have caused the same excitement and panic. It does not matter, perhaps, that the story is not a historical and factual one. The sudden rush for great riches and, sometimes, the disastrous results are there on the pages of history books for everyone to read.

It is only strange that a simple and wonderful flower was the cause of the financial speculation which made some people hugely rich and destroyed many others.

And all this was because of diseased tulip bulbs that were still in the ground.

If you want to watch some videos on this topic, you can click on the links to YouTube videos below.

If you want to answer questions on this article to test how much you understand, you can click on the green box: Finished Reading?

Videos :

1. The Deadly Profession of Orchid Hunting (8:42)

2. Deadly Disguised Orchids (2:22)

3. Orchidelirium (2:10)

4. Orchid Hostages Released (2:27)

5. The History & Origins of Orchids (11:14)

6. Origin of Rose (2:46)

7. Argument Between Lord Brahma and Vishnu for the Beautiful Roses (2:10)

8. Young Lovers Using Roses to Show their Love (13:07)

9. Why the Netherlands is the Tulip Capital of the World (3:07)

10. The Business of Tulips (2:24)

11. Tulipomania (3:38)