Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch painter with a long name, an artist famous for “chiaroscuro,” a painting technique featuring a mix of light and dark.

His work was also was the inspiration for 19th century Dutch bulb growers and merchants, who began classifying long-stemmed, colorful tulips as Rembrandts in honor of his work. While Rembrandt didn’t dwell on flowers as a painter, his intense paintings inspired the bulb merchants to name the color-streaked flowers after him.

To understand the connection between the flowers and the painter, it’s helpful to review a little botanical history, particularly the period dubbed affectionately by plantspeople and historians as “Tulipmania.”

At the time of Rembrandt’s birth in July 1606, the tulip was still a recent introduction to Holland. But by the time he was 31, the artist was part of a lively culture and society that also witnessed Tulipmania, the great Dutch speculative stock market frenzy and crash that peaked in 1637.

Horticultural explorers brought the first tulips to Europe from Turkey in the mid-1500s. You would be hard-pressed to find the bulbs in Europe in the early 1600s, except in university botanical gardens. At one such garden, located at the University of Leiden, some locals in flower lust climbed the walls of the botanical garden, dug up and stole some tulip bulbs and began cultivating them for sale. Tulipmania caught on and drove some to financial ruin.

In particular, multi-colored varieties with distinctive, mottled streaks were highly prized. The streaks were the result of a plant disease called mosaic virus. No two were alike. In a nod to Rembrandt, the streaked varieties were classified and named after him.

During Tulipmania, bulb buyers traded these little orbs as futures. One bulb could be sold hundreds of times over a single winter, while the bulb was still in the ground. Traders earned as much as $60,000 a month – in today’s money! The furious pace and practice of these buyers and sellers was called “wind trade,” because little more was being traded than promises in the wind. The thing collapsed in 1637, sending Holland and much of Europe into economic depression. Today, economic and government students still study the Tulipmania period, along with the U.S. stock market crash of 1929, as examples of speculative markets gone out of control.

Whew! Do you actually want to invite these bulbs into your own gardens? You bet!

Today, true virus-infected Rembrandt tulips are no longer commercially available in Holland, and are found only in historic bulb collections. But thanks to Holland’s professional hybridizers, you still can get Rembrandt-style tulips with the same exotic streaked coloration patterns. These are actually disease-free and genetically stable lookalikes.

To mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt in 2006, art lovers worldwide will celebrate with events and exhibitions. You can throw a little party of your own by adding the streaked tulips to your garden.

If you want to grow popular Dutch varieties of modern Rembrandt-style tulips, seek out Tulipa “Ice Follies,” Tulipa “Carnaval de Nice,” Tulipa “Mona Lisa,” Tulipa “Washington,” Tulipa “Flaming Parrot,” Tulipa “Marilyn,” Tulipa “Beauty of Volendam” and Tulipa “Mickey Mouse.” We can only imagine what Rembrandt might have thought of Mickey Mouse!

Cathy Peterson belongs to the Clatsop County Master Gardener Association. “In the Garden” runs weekly in Coast Weekend. Please send comments and gardening news to “In the Garden,” The Daily Astorian, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103 or online to peterson@pacifier.com