I stopped by the greenhouses this afternoon for an AV emergency, and stopped to chat with one of our undergrads doing honors research on flower bulbs. He was excited to show me some ‘broken’ tulips — tulips infected by a virus which weakens the bulb but makes adds some pizazz to the blooms. The first two below I blogged about in their normal state here (if not identical varieties, they’re very close). So you can see the effect the virus has, making some fancy tulips even fancier..
This abnormal coloring is actually caused by mites, not virus.
Tulips. I like them, but they’re too fleeting for me. Maybe some of the species tulips that come back and increase. But they’re all deer candy.
Very intriguing, I never would have dreamed.
They certainly are beautiful, but I hope they stay in the lab. We don’t need anything else to make these plants weaker, at least not down here where they are considered either annuals or squirrel food.
Jim: I never buy them because they don’t last and the deer love them.
I get some as gifts, and I rescue forced tulip bulbs and stick them in the ground with some pretty good results. They don’t always bloom the following year. But some stick around and do OK.
Les: The virus is nothing new. It’s been with tulips for centuries. The coloring it bestowed made them more valuable in the market. For tulip growers, finding a ‘broken’ tulip wasn’t a bug, it was a feature.