Tulipa Turkomania...

I always love to see your photos Donn, and these are great as always. But
just for accuracy...this is Tulipa tarda. I've checked and can't find any
reference whatsoever to any tulip with the species name "turkomania".
There's one called Tulipa turkestanica but it's quite different in
appearance. Tulipa tarda is one of my favourites too, and I've grown them
for over 20 years myself...I have them in clumps all over my yard.

Regards,
Rick A


"Donn Thorson" wrote in message
...
Tulipa Turkomania...

In article , "Radar"
wrote:

I always love to see your photos Donn, and these are great as always. But
just for accuracy...this is Tulipa tarda. I've checked and can't find any
reference whatsoever to any tulip with the species name "turkomania".
There's one called Tulipa turkestanica but it's quite different in
appearance. Tulipa tarda is one of my favourites too, and I've grown them
for over 20 years myself...I have them in clumps all over my yard.

Regards,
Rick A


"Donn Thorson" wrote in message
...
Tulipa Turkomania...



I stand corrected. I bought these particular tulips about 20 years ago
and they were listed as "Turkomania"...guess I took them at their word!
These are my favorite too, sadly this was the only bloom this year.
Thanks for the correction.
-Donn

"Donn Thorson" wrote in message
...
In article , "Radar"
wrote:

I always love to see your photos Donn, and these are great as always.
But
just for accuracy...this is Tulipa tarda. I've checked and can't find
any
reference whatsoever to any tulip with the species name "turkomania".
There's one called Tulipa turkestanica but it's quite different in
appearance. Tulipa tarda is one of my favourites too, and I've grown
them
for over 20 years myself...I have them in clumps all over my yard.

Regards,
Rick A


"Donn Thorson" wrote in message
...
Tulipa Turkomania...



I stand corrected. I bought these particular tulips about 20 years ago
and they were listed as "Turkomania"...guess I took them at their word!
These are my favorite too, sadly this was the only bloom this year.
Thanks for the correction.
-Donn

Hi Donn,

I'm glad you didn't take offense at being corrected...some people do. And
I'm sorry (and surprised) to hear you only had one bloom on your Tarda
tulips this year. That's unusual for these guys, especially from an
established clump. I have one small clump near the west wall of my house
that's finished blooming, but the others around the yard are still in
bud...lots of buds...and I'm way up here around 53 degrees north latitude,
so most spring flowers are just starting.

I guess I'm not surprised to hear the name "Turkomania" was how these tulips
were labelled. They are one of many species native to Turkey and other
parts of central Asia, in fact, a lot of tulips have been bred from wild
species originally found growing in the mountains of central Asia. And
there's certainly no law (apparently) against a company calling a plant
anything they want...unless it's a patented plant, which of course these
aren't because they're a wild species.

It always makes me shake my head when I'm looking through some plant
catalogues, to see the names that are given to plants or bulbs that are very
common, or at least are familiar to me. Purely descriptive or whimsical
names that someone must have just made up because they thought it was
'cute'...and is NOT the name originally given to the plant by whoever
discovered or bred the variety! So you could just as easily have bought
these tulips labelled as "Yellow Star" or "White Tip" or "Turkish Delight"
or who knows what else! But if you want to be botanically accurate, they're
Tulipa tarda, or Tarda tulips.

To make matters more confusing, they're sometimes called Tulipa dasystemon,
but by what I can see, dasystemon are pure yellow and tarda have the white
tips. The world of Botany and Taxonomy is a confusing place, and it doesn't
help that botanists keep disagreeing over the names of some plants and are
constantly renaming or reclassifying them.

Regards,
Rick A