Tulip Fire

About this book

The bulb country of the Netherlands runs on healthy stock and strict rules, because a tulip disease in one field can leap to a dozen others, and the growers police one another's flowers with the seriousness of people whose whole living depends on it. Joost Bakhuis, thirty eight, is the last of a once famous breeding family, growing ordinary, healthy, virus free commercial tulips on the shrunken remains of the family land, and keeping, in the old farmhouse, the Bakhuis tulip book: a three hundred year old painted album in which every variety the family ever bred is recorded in exquisite hand painted plates, with the crosses and the notes beside them. Its most famous page, reproduced in art books the world over, is the plate of the Fire, the legendary broken tulip, white flamed with crimson, the flower that made and then unmade the family.