Tulips I have known
By Elizabeth Licata
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T. acuminata and Black Parrot from Tulipa,
photographs by Chistopher Baker, text by Willem Lemmers and Emma Sweeney with essay by Michael Pollan, Artisan, 1999. |
•Usually don’t last longer than two-three years before diminishing and getting all stunted and twisted-looking.
•Should have full sun and should be left in that sun for weeks after the flowers have died so their leaves can yellow and wither hideously away.
•Are often mislabeled, so that disappointed gardeners find themselves with unfortunate combinations of, say, yellow and pink when they had hoped for white and dark purple.
In my case, I prefer to grow tall, late-blooming tulips or short, early-blooming species tulips. Species tulips, come in all kinds of petite, pretty shapes and colors, and are more apt to perennialize (i.e., last for years and years) than any other tulips. Tall, late-bloomers are stately and spectacular (though a windy rainstorm can permanently set them askew), and their flowers often change color and shape—opening wider and wider as the season progresses, until they resemble a single-flowered peony more than a tulip. These are best removed and saved elsewhere for replanting (or they can simply be discarded as annuals). In fact, I’d say that a willingness to accept the tulip as an annual plant is the key to success with the entire species.
Our fascination with tulips is nourished by the vague historical knowledge that they used to be traded for vast sums in European markets, where fortunes were won and lost by tulip speculators. Although this seventeenth century heyday was short-lived, there still exist tulips whose exotic forms recall the time when these flowers were prized as nature’s rarest and most beautiful commodity.
The parrot family, for example, features graceful, twisted stems, fringed and scalloped blooms, and striking color striations (which used to be caused by disease, but are now bred in). At the other end of the spectrum, smaller, species varieties like t. acuminata act as a conversation starter—i.e., “What is that weird plant?” The green or viridiflora types are also show-stoppers: each has green streaks running throughout the petals, regardless of the other colors.
In spite of all their caveats, it is more than worthwhile to seek out and grow some of the more unusual tulip varieties, throwbacks to a time when flowers had meaning and value beyond mere landscape beautification.
Elizabeth Licata is editor of Buffalo Spree.
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