When It Comes to Gardening Tulips Put a Spring in Your Step!

A mosaic celebrating the tulips in our garden taken last spring and early summer.

The tulip is a perennial, bulbous plant with showy flowers in the genus Tulipa, of which around 75 wild species are currently accepted and which belongs to the family Liliaceae.

The genus's native range extends west to the Iberian Peninsula, through North Africa to Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, throughout the Levant (Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan) and Iran, North to Ukraine, southern Siberia and Mongolia, and east to the Northwest of China. The tulip's centre of diversity is in the Pamir, Hindu Kush, and Tien Shan mountains. It is a typical element of steppe and winter-rain Mediterranean vegetation. A number of species and many hybrid cultivars are grown in gardens, as potted plants, or as cut flowers.

Tulips are spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species, tulip plants can be between 4 inches (10 cm) and 28 inches (71 cm) high. The tulip's large flowers usually bloom on scapes with leaves in a rosette at ground level and a single flowering stalk arising from amongst the leaves.Tulip stems have few leaves. Larger species tend to have multiple leaves. Plants typically have two to six leaves, some species up to 12. The tulip's leaf is strap-shaped, with a waxy coating, and the leaves are alternately arranged on the stem; these fleshy blades are often bluish green in color. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on the interior surface near the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue (several tulips with "blue" in the name have a faint violet hue).

The flowers have six distinct, basifixed stamens with filaments shorter than the tepals. Each stigma has three distinct lobes, and the ovaries are superior, with three chambers. The tulip's seed is a capsule with a leathery covering and an ellipsoid to globe shape. Each capsule contains numerous flat, disc-shaped seeds in two rows per chamber. These light to dark brown seeds have very thin seed coats and endosperm that does not normally fill the entire seed.

Etymology

The word tulip, first mentioned in western Europe in or around 1554 and seemingly derived from the "Turkish Letters" of diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, first appeared in English as tulipa or tulipant, entering the language by way of French: tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulīpa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend ("muslin" or "gauze"), and may be ultimately derived from the Persian: دلبند‎ delband ("Turban"), this name being applied because of a perceived resemblance of the shape of a tulip flower to that of a turban. This may have been due to a translation error in early times, when it was fashionable in the Ottoman Empire to wear tulips on turbans. The translator possibly confused the flower for the turban.

Tulips are called laleh (from Persian لاله, lâleh) in Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and Bulgarian. In Arabic letters, "laleh" is written with the same letters as Allah, which is why the flower became a holy symbol. It was also associated with the House of Osman, resulting in tulips being widely used in decorative motifs on tiles, mosques, fabrics, crockery, etc. in the Ottoman Empire

Cultivation

Tulip cultivars have usually several species in their direct background, but most have been derived from Tulipa suaveolens, often erroneously listed as Tulipa schrenkii. Tulipa gesneriana is in itself an early hybrid of complex origin and is probably not the same taxon as was described by Conrad Gesner in the 16th century.

Tulips are indigenous to mountainous areas with temperate climates and need a period of cool dormancy, known as vernalization. They thrive in climates with long, cool springs and dry summers. Tulip bulbs imported to warm-winter areas of are often planted in autumn to be treated as annuals.

Tulip bulbs are typically planted around late summer and fall, in well-drained soils, normally from 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) deep, depending on the type. Species tulips are normally planted deeper.

Propagation

Tulips can be propagated through bulb offsets, seeds or micropropagation. Offsets and tissue culture methods are means of asexual propagation for producing genetic clones of the parent plant, which maintains cultivar genetic integrity. Seeds are most often used to propagate species and subspecies or to create new hybrids. Many tulip species can cross-pollinate with each other, and when wild tulip populations overlap geographically with other tulip species or subspecies, they often hybridize and create mixed populations. Most commercial tulip cultivars are complex hybrids, and often sterile.

Offsets require a year or more of growth before plants are large enough to flower. Tulips grown from seeds often need five to eight years before plants are of flowering size. Commercial growers usually harvest the tulip bulbs in late summer and grade them into sizes; bulbs large enough to flower are sorted and sold, while smaller bulbs are sorted into sizes and replanted for sale in the future. The Netherlands are the world's main producer of commercial tulip plants, producing as many as 3 billion bulbs annually, the majority for export.

For further information please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

Some rights reserved

Taken on: October 29, 2019

Tags:

fdsflickrtoys

Tulip

Garden

genus Tulipa

family Liliaceae

Spring

Perennials

ContactGroups

THE GALAXY

Floral Fantasy

“DoubleFantasy” « less

Sets appears in: • Flower Power (& a Few Leaves, Hedges & Veggies)

Groups appears in: • Flora around the World (P 1- A 3) • TMI: your ART & NATURE **NO PEOPLE OR MAN-MADE OBJECTS** P1♥C1 more » • Colour Art Awards -=Post 1, Award 3=- (Colours ONLY) • Flickr's Fantastic Flowers (3F) - please comment! • Flickr Mosaics & Collages • FLORES Y MAS FLORES/FLOWERS AND MORE FLOWERS (P1/C3) • FLOR-CAULE, P FOLHA - POST 1 AWARD 2- • "Flickr's Awesome Blossoms" P1/A3 Sweeper Active • PLANET EARTH OUR HOME • ***Ineffable*** Award 3 • Colour Mania • The Flower Basket *Post 1 - Award 3* *Sweeper Active* • Art of Images ~ AOI L1~ ( Post 1, Award 3) NO "AI Portraits" • UNFORGETTABLE FLOWERS (L1) [P1 - A3] (New - ID Thread) • Perfect Petals - P1/A3- No Bugs or Man Made Objects ✿ • Earth.Wind and Fire (Post and Comment) • Floral Fantasy - Post 1- Comment 3 • DazzlePix MOSAICS & MONTAGES • Solidarity against cancer ♠ Solidaridad contra el cáncer • The Best of Unforgettable Flowers (L2) [P1 - A2] • ***ART 2024 GROUP***ART FROM 2024 ONLY! • QUINTA FLOWER • !* WE LOVE ALL FLOWERS (POST 1 AWARD 3) • Living Jewels of Nature • The Galaxy & Stars 1 (P1/C5 - No Spiders, No Snakes) • OH NO, NOT ANOTHER FLOWER! (AWARD 3) • Precious Living Jewels of Nature • Members Choice (Admin Invite Only) • A New Art & Photo Gallery - Post 1/Award 1 • BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS (POST 1 AWARD 3) • JURIED EXHIBITION - P1-A2 • ♥♥♥ FLOWERS 4 YOU ♥♥♥ P 1 / C 4 Please join first ! • * NATURE'S MOSAICS & BEAUTIFUL CREATIONS (post 1~award 1) • Flickr's Immaculate Flowers • frog pond florals.. by invitation ~ P1/C2 • Photo Mosaic Makers. • Art Museion • GLOW !! • CONTACT GROUPS [ POST 1 - AWARDS 5 ] • Magic Flowers - HALL OF FAME • Magic Flowers - L3 • Magic Flowers - L1 • Magic Flowers - L2 • Carolina's farm friends - P1/C3 • **Lise´s Masterpieces Gallery* • MAGIC OF MACRO & CLOSE-UP Nature only! • Photos Thru Your Lens, (No People) P1,A1 or MORE at the time of • Art With Your Heart • !* Remembrance Susy ♥in Ricordo della cara amica♥NO SL ! « less

Stats: 24,075 views / 675 comments

go back

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: