The Botany of Desire Page #6

really fast, everybody wants in.

And as long as

there's a greater fool,

A lot of money can be made.

You just don't want to be left

Holding the bag or the bulb

at the end of it.

What none of

the ruined investors

Could possibly have known

was that the breaks in color

They saw as

the epitome of beauty

Were actually caused

by a virus.

The tulip bulbs that sold for

The price of

5th avenue townhouses

Turned out to be damaged goods.

Well, this is something

That nobody understood

at the time --

I mean, no one in the 1600s

and the 1700s

Had any notion of

plant diseases,

Or any idea that the variation

in a flower

Could be caused by something

like a disease.

Today,

viruses like the one

That once drove the tulip's

value to record heights

Are the enemy of

the global tulip trade,

Because infected bulbs

cannot be exported.

So plant physiologists

like henk gude are working hard

To combat them.

A tulip that is infected

with a virus

Is not a healthy tulip --

It costs lots of energy

for the plant

To cope with the virus.

And if you replant the bulb

year after year,

Then its growing potential will

decline over the years.

So, in a few years, you will not

have a tulip left.

Gude works for

The applied plant

research center

At wageningen university

in the netherlands.

To find out if a plant is

Infected by a virus,

we have to homogenize it,

To squeeze juice from it,

And we can detect the presence

Of the virus in the juice

With lab techniques.

When we understand

how the plant grows,

We can try to make the plant do

What we want it to do --

And immediately apply it

For the benefit of growers

and breeders and exporters.

One of these people

is jan ligthart,

Who has been growing tulips

for more than 30 years

And has become one of holland's

most successful breeders.

What you see

from here to there

Is all new seedlings.

This is the first time

I see them flowering.

I wanted to be a carpenter,

Just like my father,

working with wood.

And when I saw the tulips,

I was astonished.

I said, "ah! That's what

I want to be!"

Tulip gardener.

Ligthart's first step

in breeding a new variety

Is to act like

a human bumblebee,

Moving pollen

from one place to another.

The process

is quite simple.

We use one tulip as the father

And the other just like

the mother.

And we make pollination.

The breeders

of tulips today

Are interested

in new combinations.

They're sex crazy,

right?

They're operating these,

you know, plant brothels.

And out of that comes

a great deal of variation.

And out of that variation

is the future of the species.

Dabbing the pollen

takes just a few seconds.

But it can take years

before ligthart can be sure

That his new variety will

consistently produce flowers

With the qualities

the market demands --

Like durability,

disease resistance, and beauty.

That's enough.

One

of the thousand seedlings

Are what I want.

The rest is not good enough.

That's the hardest part.

You have to look out

For the first,

the only good one.

This year,

ligthart is pinning his hopes

On the bulbs from one of his

latest breeding experiments.

This tulip,

that is my favorite.

I give it a big future.

Just the right color.

Pure pink.

This one I started

Nine years ago with seeds.

When I saw this tulip blooming

for the first time,

In my seedlings,

I was just amazed.

I sat there on my knees

And looked at them

for a long time.

Other tulips, you walk by

And it doesn't venture to do

anything to you.

And when you see this one,

Your heart gets...

Ck-ck!

This makes a difference.

Each time I look at it...

I fell in love on the tulip.

But ligthart's love

for his tulips doesn't stop him

And his family from ripping

the flowers

Off their stalks

every spring.

If they didn't,

The flowers would divert

nutrients from the bulbs,

Which, for a breeder

like ligthart,

Are what brings in

the money.

What I want to do

for a tulip

Is to create a much bigger

market for the whole world.

Because a tulip must make money.

It's a business.

You can't have them for fun

Because we have to make

a living.

Ligthart's

best tulips

Often get introduced to

the rest of the world here,

At the keukenhof gardens

near amsterdam.

Every spring,

half a million visitors

Flock here to see the four

and a half million bulbs

That make it the largest

tulip garden in the world.

The dutch have mastered

the propagation of tulips.

And there are people in holland

Making great fortunes

off of tulips yet again.

It's not a bubble anymore,

it's a mature industry.

And

a very lucrative one,

Whose bustling

nerve center proves

Just how hard we're willing

to work

To spread flowers

around the world.

One out of every three flowers

bought and sold in the world

Passes through here.

This is the flower auction

in the dutch town of aalsmeer.

You're not allowed

on the auction floor,

Because there are

a million carts zipping around

At alarmingly high speeds.

And it is like a sea

of flowers.

It's almost like watching paint

being mixed on a palette.

You know,

you watch this line

Of yellow sunflowers

snaking their way

Through this ocean

of red tulips.

It's just dazzling

in that way.

The floor

of the flower auction covers

An area

bigger than 200 football fields,

Making it one of the largest

buildings on the planet.

Some 19 million flowers

From all over the world

change hands here

Every day.

It's an extraordinarily

complex system,

With a very simple purpose --

To move flowers from

the field to the home

As quickly as possible.

In flower business,

three things are very important,

And that's being fast,

being fast, and being fast,

Because the flower that's

fresh today

Will lose 15%

of its value tomorrow.

The minute you cut it,

it starts to die.

There is this race on

to get it to market.

Once the deal is struck,

The perishable flowers are

rushed to the amsterdam airport

And from there to flower shops

all over the world.

This incessant,

unrelenting movement

Of flowers and money

Doesn't let up for a second.

All for a product

That has absolutely

no practical value.

Flowers

are exquisitely useless.

They're this great froth

or extravagance in our lives.

But that there is

a multi-billion-dollar trade

In these wonderfully useless,

Beautiful things

is kind of great.

When you begin to look

at the plant's point of view,

I suppose the greatest threat

to your survival

Is people losing interest

in you,

Falling out of fashion.

You know,

the gillyflower or the pink --

These were important

victorian flowers.

I don't even know

what they look like.

So the flower has to keep us

interested.

And one of the ways a flower

keeps us interested is changing.

The really ingenious ones

Are the ones

that figure out ways

To reengage us

every generation.

In the plant world,

Just like our own,

not everyone can be beautiful,

Or sweet.

But even a lowly weed can get us

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