In "Tulip Fever," the historical drama directed by Justin Chadwick, a pair of lovers place all their hopes in tulips. The film, released in the US on September 1, is set during the 17th-century tulip boom. The delicate flowers made some extremely wealthy, while others sank into poverty after the trend subsided. Can Sophie and Jan save their love affair with this risky business?

Many stories have been told about how the tulip made its way to Europe from the farthest reach of the Persian Empire. The sweetest is the story of a Dutch textile merchant who found a pair of ugly brown flower bulbs among his rolls of fabric. Without paying them any mind, he threw them into a pile of garbage. A few weeks later, the hill of trash had been transformed into a pile of exotic blossoms.

The path to Dutch soil took tulips on several detours. The Austrian emperor's ambassador to the Turkish sultan Suleiman the Magnificent wrote in his letters about the flowers he'd seen in the tulip lover's gardens and eventually brought them back to Vienna with him. The court botanist there later took a position at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands where he began to cultivate them.

The largest and most famous of the Netherlands' tulip farms is in Lisse, around 20 kilometers outside of Amsterdam. Keukenhof attracts nearly one million visitors annually from around the world. The brightly colored tulip fields are in bloom from late March through late May, featuring nearly seven million flowers and over 800 varieties.

What Keukenhof is to the Netherlands, is the Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden to India's Kashmir province. More than one million tulips are planted here, drawing many tourists. The monarch of the Mughal Empire, which stretched across vast parts of the Indian subcontinent, was so fascinated by tulips that he cultivated the flowers and planted tulip gardens across the empire in the 16th century.

Tulips have been bred for centuries, and still are today in the Netherlands even today. The variety known as Crispa - a genetic hybrid - is pictured here. Cross-breeding is done by removing pollen from one variety and placing it in the pistil of another. With a bit of luck, a new kind of tulip is born.

No sooner has the Christmas tree been tossed out, than the first vases of tulips are decorating tables across Europe. Although the flowers naturally bloom in April and May, those grown in greenhouses can be harvested earlier directly from the bulbs. Those grown outdoors are hearty and aren't damaged by a few snowflakes. The snow layer actually protects the flowers from frost.

The Dutch are the number one exporters of flowers worldwide, and run 80 percent of the tulip trade. There are about 4,000 different tulip varieties. Planted in the fields in the autumn, starting in mid-March they light up the landscape all the way to the horizon.

The scent of blossoms wafts through the air over fields and flower beds. At the high point of the flowering bulb season in Holland on April 23, it smells of tulips, hyacinths and narcissus. That's when the decorated floats of the "Bloemencorso Bollenstreek," the Bollenstreek Flower Parade, pass through the streets between Haarlem and Leiden.

The country estate, which dates from 1642, is now the main attraction of the Bollenstreek region. Its park comprises more than 30 hectares. From mid-March until late May, seven million bulb flowers bloom in it. Every year, more than 80,000 visitors from around the world come to the tiny Dutch village of Lisse to take in the huge flower show.

Dutch design is incorporated in the flower bulb mosaic, one of the highlights of the theme year. In addition, the flower shows in the Oranje Nassau Pavilion are entirely in the style of Dutch Design. Two of the inspirational gardens are also dedicated to the theme: the Mondriaan Garden with its primary square color patches will be a great attraction to the international public.

Tulips originally come from the Middle East and central Asia. The name tulip seems to come from the Turkish "tülbent," and ultimately from the Persian "dulband," meaning turban, possibly referring to the shape of its flowers. This led to the designation "tulipa turcarum," "tulip of the Turks," although actually the Turkish word for tulip is "lale."

More than 400 years ago, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq traveled to what was then Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, now the Turkish city of Istanbul, as the Austrian emperor's ambassador. Tulips from Persia were in blossom in the sultan's garden. The diplomat sent bulbs and seeds to Vienna as a present.

As prefect of the imperial medical garden in Vienna, the Flemish botanist Charles de l'Écluse came into the possession of tulip seeds. In 1593 he became a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and cultivated tulips in the interests of science and scholarship. It's presumed that thieves stole bulbs in order to sell them for profit. In this way, the vogue for tulips spread.

In the 17th century, the tulip advanced to be queen among the flowers. During the period known as tulip mania, up to 10,000 guilders were offered for one bulb of "Semper Augustus," a multi-colored tulip with white stripes. That was the price of a townhouse in Amsterdam at the time. The original genetic line of this tulip is extinct. Nowadays there are modern cultivars with similar variegation.

If you want to keep cut tulips from becoming lanky and drooping out of the vase, fill it with only a little water, or pierce the stems several times with a needle just below the flower heads. That will restrict the amount of growth hormone they release when cut. But purists leave tulips to do what they do naturally, and love them when they're half-faded, with petals raining down around the vase.