When we arrived home there was a tulip flowering in our front garden. OK, nothing too special about that except we have been away and I have no idea who planted it or when.
True, it could have been me any number of years ago, it is a bulb after all. But I was of the impression that tulips need a cold winter to set the flower or some such. Melbourne does not get cold winters, not by tulip standards at least. You get flowers from tulip bulbs the first year you plant them and then never again.
So I went searching info and certainly the experts seem to agree that cold is needed for a tulip to flower. Some go so far as recommending that you store your bulbs in the fridge over winter. (An aside: once at work, in my incarnation as a food chemist, I was presented with a bag of 'onions' that hospitalised a guy who ate them. They were daffodil bulbs.)
As is often the case when you go looking for information, I found more than I had expected.
A quick association test (it's the psychologist in me):
Strawberries and ...
Abbott and ...
Heaven and ...
Tulips and ...
That's alright, I am not marking the papers.
The surprise to me is that tulips originate in Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. The Dutch just have a good marketting system.
Just for good measure, the word tulip originates from a Turkish word meaning turban.
There you go.
...
the world is full of little miracles...
ReplyDeleteTulips from Afghanistan? Max Bygraves would be horrified.
ReplyDeleteThe only flower that attract me is rose, thats all. Other than that I know nothing.
ReplyDeleteYou must be on drugs! An association test on the net? LOL
ReplyDeleteMy wife put our tulips in the freezer when we lived in Washington state because the winters were often not cold enough to activate them. Your's must be very different and from the photo you don't have only one or two. Hmmmm.
Guess you are just lucky. I mean that because I really do like those little early blooming guys.
Have a good one.
I didn't know that! But to have tulips in my garden is like to have snow falling down here in this part of the world. I love tulips by the way...Any chance you can make it a gardenful?
ReplyDeleteturban? hmm.. now you've mentioned it, they do look like turban.
ReplyDeleteI live in Wisconsin US
ReplyDeleteI have tulips that I planted
10 Years ago and they flower
every year.
I leave them in the ground
and just wait for spring.
I am sorry your lose,
I hope he is at peace.
kay lee
http://zccmusicministry.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteThat Lee.
As for Tulips?
Heck, I planted a pack out front and cold winter, warm winter, still flowers about every other year.
(don't know who told you once and done)
We have to be careful, in fact, not to hack down the plant in the early spring, as it's growing in the middle of a bunch of grass.
(yeah...that, too0
Hey, we're bachelors, not gardeners. Oh, sure, we get in a 'matoe or two sometimes, but, usually we don't take our own common sense advice...cleaning the weeds befoe they set on)
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