Early one morning in 1985, a pair of researchers trekked into a spit of Colombian rainforest surrounded by coffee plantations. Their task was to identify all the epiphytes — plants that grow on other plants — in the forest canopy.
As Jan Wolf, a botanist now at the University of Amsterdam, measured tree trunk girth from the ground, volunteer field assistant Jan Klomp, an economist by training, clipped into a harness and climbed up a tall tree. From his high perch, Klomp called down to say he had discovered something more familiar in the Netherlands than in the rainforest: tulips. Perplexed, Wolf scoured the forest floor for fallen flowers.