> ... why would an author from the Wall Street > Journal be interested in bulbs, especially Tulips? Go look at the paper now and then, or their Web site. I always learn something, whether from the articles or the comments. http://online.wsj.com/home-page/ Look under Life & Culture, where you can often read about plays, novels, fine art, architecture, food, and the like. The gardening articles in the WSJ are targeted to people who aren't fanatics about plants but want a nice garden to impress the neighbors. We specialists won't find much there to interest us. You can learn an awful lot about economics and business from the rest of the paper, though. Many people who read the WSJ live in houses with gardens. They like to plant things that look nice. What spring flowers does every child draw? Tulips. (Daffodils are too hard to draw. I remember that well from childhood.) Like most of our neighbors, WSJ readers are afraid to think outside the box when it comes to what to plant in the garden. (I want exactly what all my neighbors have! I'm afraid to be different and stand out from the herd! But I want it to be exclusive so people envy me!) They are also frightened of gardening because they don't understand how to give different plants what they need, and they are accustomed to every plant they buy dying. Tulips and daffodils are what they think about in the spring. Yet they need to show off for the neighbors with the latest, hardest-to-find of everything. So the editor gave the writer an assignment to write about what's new in tulips and daffodils. As for tulips being the first documented speculative bubble.... Perhaps the first with the price documented day by day, but certainly not the first bubble. Speculative bubbles had been going on for millenia before we got to tulips. Speculative bubbles are inherent in an exchange economy between humans because we as a species are only minimally rational. We go bonkers when we think somebody else might be able to buy something while we miss out - unless we move fast enough and with enough cash. Toss in government control of economies to benefit those in charge and their campaign contributors, and we have an absolute guarantee speculative bubbles float as far into the future as the inner eye can see. If people think Wikipedia is such a great source, why come here for bulb information? Leo Martin Phoenix Arizona USA