Tulips, wooden shoes, Delft Blue and windmills, that' s how people still see Holland.
But the windmills were invented in Persia once, the Delft Blue is an immitation of Chinese "China", and the tulips? They come from Turkey! That leaves us just the wooden shoes. But no one wears them anymore except for 1 or 2 old farmers.
In the 17th century the Turkish sultans adored the tulips that were blown to Turkey from the plains in Mongolia. The Turkish name for the flower was 'l a l e', but more often it was called
't a l i p a n ' , because of its shape: like the head-wear for men in these days (the tulbands).
So the word 'talipan' became tulband �nd tulip.
Trading in tulips has been a Dutch mainstay since those days, it became a multi-billion dollar industry. But now scarcity of land, new pesticide regulations and vastly improved air transportation are pushing the Dutch to grow their bulbs elsewhere. These other locations include Turkey and China!
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