The
Bizarres
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Today we know much more about the world around us, science has yielded
wonderful treasures as well as unbearable horrors, our modern environment
is full of articles and tools we could never have imagined and we know
much more about flowers today than we did even ten years ago.
We know, for instance, that a supermarket is a natural place for urban
Americans to make impulse purchases of flowers. One may not like it but
we need to accept it, because the supermarket is a unique destination
from which the consumer is directly going home. You cannot say that about
a mall, a cinema or a ballpark.
Most of us in the flower industry our acutely aware of what is available
in the supermarkets and megamarkets, and as such I believe we need to
differentiate what we sell to our clients, which of course means we need
to keep looking for novel products.
I, for one, am always captivated by those old tulips one sees in Flemish
paintings, and especially the tulips. Particularly the virus-ridden breaking
tulips!
As we know, the Dutch growers became quite disenchanted with the tulips
and abandoned their cultivation for almost two hundred years. However,
across the Channel in England, the Florists, as the enthusiast-growers
were called, continued to be fascinated by the diverse array of shapes,
colors and breaks that could be found in the tulip genus. Being obsessed
with cataloguing all living the things, the British went on a quest to
identify every combination, and as a result produced many fancy tulips,
some of the most outstanding being white feathered with red kmown as the
“Roses”; those that are white flamed with purple or black
feathering named “Bybloemens”, as well as yellow marked with
dark red, purple or black, and which are called “the Bizarres”.
In the process of learning about the tulips, the viruses were slowly eliminated,
but having kept alive an infected host for so many hundred years, disease
free mutations resembling the classic Dutch tulips are available today.
Tulips are formed from six petals, and derive their color form two possible
sources. The ground color is derived from the mesophyll cells which contain
plastids, and the color in the plastids is either yellow or white. A white
tulip has no color in the plastids, and a yellow tulip has only yellow
in the plastids. The other source of color comes from a substance called
anthrocyanin which is a soluble sap stored in the cuticle of the petal.
All the colors of the tulip are derived from combinations of white or
yellow with the anthrocyanin. Occasionally, color from the cuticle at
the base of the petal would streak up or create flames, or alternatively
would color the top margins of the petal.
In the 17th century the aphids exacerbated this proclivity which led to
the Tulipmania. Today breeders, are trying to emulate the characteristics
of those old tulips and there are some good choices available, notable
‘Carnival de Nice’, a wonderful red streaked white double
tulip, “Roccoco” a rich red limned with gold. as well as the
so-called “Parrot” tulips, especially “Flaming Parrot”.
Also in the south of France, a few growers intentionally allow some of
the bulbs to become infected with the aphids to produce the “chined”
series, and I highly recommend these.
A particularly special resource is Hortus Bulborum in Holland,
a veritable repository of Dutch botanical history, which has kept a lot
of the old heirloom varieties available by growing and reproducing them
each year, such that limited supplies are available in Holland and here
in the USA. Certainly, I have no idea when these items might reach commercial
growers of cut-flowers, but it would certainly behoove the enthusiast
and/or committed designer to try growing some of these bulbs to obtain
some very exclusive flowers.
I highly recommend a visit to
www.hortus-bulborum.nl, as well as a visit to www.oldhousegardens.com,
where some of these pedigree bulbs can be purchased.
In fact Old House Gardens offers tulips from the era of the Tulip craze,
such as ‘Zomerschorn’ from 1620; ‘Lac Van Rijn’;
several species types from that era or earlier, and cool blooms in that
genre such as ‘Insulinde’ from 1914 and ‘Silver Standard’
of 1760.
Another valuable website to visit would be www.ronaldvanderhilst.com
And for commercially grown substitutes, please enquire to your Mayesh
sales associate, as each year new additions are made available.
Last but not least, I highly recommend two books on tulips; “The
Tulip” by Anna Pavord, a wonderfully written book on the history
of Tulips, which besides being very entertaining provides a lot of information
on tulips in general. Also recommended is a recent publication from the
Timberland Press entitled_____
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