HORTUS BULBORUM or TREASURY OF HISTORIC BULBS

[Boyed]

Luit,

My colleague from Russia, who grows "Louis XIV" supplied this photo for that tulip.

[Boyed]

Luit,

I know what you mean. That is why I asked you about its real colour, taking into acount all that nuances with making photos. You've seen it in a real and can give a clear reply with its true colour. Anyway, now its clear. I am just trying to make a better impression about these unusual-coloured wonderful breeder tulips.

[Lvandelft]

Luit,

My colleague from Russia, who grows "Louis XIV" supplied this photo for that tulip.

I did not see so much yellow in the flowers here!

[Lvandelft]

Now I just read what Jim McKenny wrote about Lois XIV, in Connoisseur Collection,
so we'll wait what he says about the pictures.

[Lvandelft]

and a few other Breeder tulips, followed by some Parrot tulips,
of which is  perfecta a very old one from 1680.
and finally in this batch some single late tulips.

Tulipa Breeder T. Lord Stanley 1915                   
Tulipa Breeder T. Sans Pareille 1863         
Tulipa Breeder T. Wilberforce 1913             

Tulipa Parrot Group Giant Parrot 1972             
Tulipa Parrot Group Ho Tcho 1985             
Tulipa Parrot Group Perfecta 1680               
               
Tulipa SLG Hildegard Knef 1978         
Tulipa SLG Wim van Est 1952             
Tulipa SLG Broadway 1985 
Tulipa SLG Inglescombe Scarlet 1902

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Wonderful pictures Luit   
I didn't realize Wim van Est had his own Tulip    so he didn't just become famous because of his watch 
Thanks again for showing Luit.
Luc (from "B"....)

[Boyed]

Luit,

Again, wonderful pictures!
I’ve never had affection for parrot tulips, but these old dragon tulips seem to be nicer than modern ones. Greigii parrot tulip “Giant parrot” is really catchy, bonused by a large size of flowers and good shape.

Breeder tulip “Lord Stanly” somewhat resembles me SLT “Irish Coffee” by colour grown by my Lithuanian colleague.

[Boyed]

Liut,

Do you have a picture of SLG "Inglescombe Yellow"? I'd like to see it in an open state. Some 7 years ago I found an old yellow tulip in a garden of a local gardner and introduced it in my collection as "Inglescombe Yellow". But now I had a look at a photo of "Golden Harvest" and got confused.

[Jim McKenney]

Now I just read what Jim McKenny wrote about Lois XIV, in Connoisseur Collection,
so we'll wait what he says about the pictures.

First let me say that I am very grateful for the posting of these images. Luit and Zhirair are really whetting my appetite for wonderful tulips. The Breeder tulips have long been among my favorites, and I shed a tear years ago when they were merged in the commercial lists with the single late tulips. There is in some of these tulips a richness of color which has to be seen to be appreciated. It is hugely exciting to see that some at least of these wonderful old varieties still survive: it's as if a long lost friend has come back into my life.

I pulled my old slide of Tulipa 'Louis XIV'  and what I see is somewhat similar to the image Luit posted and very different from the two which Zhirair posted. My slide (from the season 1979) shows a flower which is basically a dull grayed violet (I don't think I have described this well - it's a difficult color to describe) but with the edges of the petals a mixture of brown and gold. The gold is more apparent on the inside of the petals.

Keep in mind that during tulip season here in Maryland daytime temperatures of 30 degrees C are not unknown, and as a result our colors are often less intense and rich.

[Lvandelft]

Wonderful pictures Luit   
I didn't realize Wim van Est had his own Tulip    so he didn't just become famous because of his watch 
Thanks again for showing Luit.
Luc (from "B"....)

Yes Luc, it's another way of not forgetting this great man, however we can see him
almost every year again lying in the ravine in "Le Tour" .
And he was not from B.   

[Maggi Young]

I know a lot of Forumists enjoy cycling, whether on their own bikes or watching the major events on TV ( I am "busy" folllowing the Giro on TV at the moment!!).... can anyone tell me;  are there any other tulips, or indeed other flowers, which have been named to honour famous cyclists?  Like that tulip, 'Wim van Est' ?

[Boyed]

What I wanted to say relating Breeder tulips. I noticed it many years ago, but, I don’t know why, I decided now to talk about that.

Most of you know that some companies trade with historical bulbs. And what I see - many Breeder tulips are sold as broken ones (virus infected) under Rembrandt tulips. What a shame!!! A good way to fool naïve people. They even didn’t warn their customers that those tulips are virus infected and should be planted far away from normal healthy bulbs. Someone can buy such a tulip and kill all his collection. Their slogan is preserving old varieties and spreading them over the world. But I am in a serious doubt about that. It is just a good way to make money. As it turns out, Hortus Bulborum doesn’t trash the infected tulips, it just sends them to their wholesale client companies, which on their turn,  sell them with quite high prices to gardeners. As you may notice most of healthy cultivars offered by Old House Gardens are mainly from other sources, not form the Hortus. I think Hortus this way gets rid of his infected tulips and make money at the same time.

Luit, just showed the pic of the variety “Lord Stanly”. That’s the way this variety and many others are sold in OLD HOUSE GARDENS.

http://oldhousegardens.com/bulb.asp?Cat=TU&page=4

[Maggi Young]

The trade in virus-infected plants of any species, Galanthus, Trillium , Tulip or whatever, does concern me greatly. As does the non-commercial spread of such plants. I do realise that many people regard these as "benign" viruses, but I am not convinced. I do see that  the Old House Garden sit does have a caveat on this page: http://www.oldhousegardens.com/hortus.asp where it says "  Much as great wines and cheeses are shaped by micro-organisms, the exquisite patterning of broken tulips is caused by a benign virus that causes the colors to break or separate without harming the bulb. It’s spread by aphids and other sucking insects, so plant these tulips away from other tulips and especially lilies."


But the warning is not very obvious and you have to go looking for it.

[Boyed]

Maggi,

They know that somebody like us can blame them, that is why they placed this phrase an a 'hidden' page to have an answer in their pocket in such cases. They wouldn't like the warning to be very obvious as they can loose thier clients for such striped tulips.

At the same time I would like to say that true Rembrandt tulips as "Absalon", 'Insulinde" and others are not virus infected.

[Jim McKenney]

What I wanted to say relating Breeder tulips. I noticed it many years ago, but, I don’t know why, I decided now to talk about that.

Most of you know that some companies trade with historical bulbs. And what I see - many Breeder tulips are sold as broken ones (virus infected) under Rembrandt tulips. What a shame!!!

Zhirair has raised several questions which I would like to address.

These issues have to do with the relationship between Breeder Tulips and the various broken tulips (primarily tulips with color patterns caused by virus infection).

What are Breeder tulips? To answer this, one has to understand what the categories of tulips in general mean. The classification of tulips is what is known as an artificial or unnatural classification (in contrast to the natural classifications used in botany). In natural classifications, the basic assumption is that all the elements in a given group share a common ancestry, and share it more closely with each other than they do with elements in other groups.
Artificial or unnatural classifications make no such assumption about relationship. Instead, the criteria for inclusion in a given artificial category are criteria which do not necessarily depend on common ancestry. For horticultural purposes, such categories are typically defined by criteria such as gross flower shape and  bloom time. The placement of a given cultivar in these artificial categories can change with time as the definition of the category changes. For instance, Tulipa Prnicess Irene began commercial life as a Single Early Tulip, but is now placed with the Triumph Tulips.
The other important thing to remember about these artificial categories is that the elements of a given category do not necessarily breed true: if you cross a Parrot Tulip with a Parrot Tulip, the progeny will not likely be Parrot Tulips. A tulip becomes a Parrot Tulip only when it begins to show the characteristics of Parrot Tulips. Earlier in its existence, the very same plants might have fitted better into some other artificial horticultural category (as in fact most historically have – the parrot look occurs well into the life of a cultivar if at all).
Now let’s go back an look at Breeder Tulips. Breeder Tulips were also an artificial category: they did not necessarily share a common ancestry, and crosses of Breeder x Breeder do not necessarily yield Breeder progeny. Tulip fanciers came to associate certain characteristics of flower shape and color with the Breeder concept; any tulip of whatever ancestry or source went into this category if it fit the criteria.
But there is also this: in the English speaking world, the term Breeder indicated that these were literally the tulips from which one raised via seed new varieties of tulips. The progeny of the Breeders were themselves categorized according to their colors and shapes: if they did not fit the Breeder criteria, they went into another category.
The little book Tulips by Rev. Joseph Jacob, published around 1912, gives this definition of Breeder: “Most garden tulips begin life as self-coloured flowers. After a time the colouring matter gets broken up into stripes and blotches. Before this change takes place a flower is known as a Breeder or Mother tulip. Darwin tulips are Breeders.”
During the last half of the twentieth century, the term Breeder came to be applied to a group of old cultivars of unusual and distinguished colors, and the old sense given by Jacobs no longer had significance (primarily because by this time the true nature of broken tulips, i.e. an understanding of the virus which causes the color pattern, was understood and growers by and large eschewed these virus infected tulips).
Zhirair, perhaps you do not know about the rather complicated and sometimes confusing naming conventions used in the English speaking world to this day to name and categorize the broken tulips. Here is what makes it confusing: the same clone can have several names depending on the degree of virus infection. The basic uninfected form will have one name, a mildly infected flower will have another name, and a flower whose color pattern fits certain criteria will have yet another name. All of these different names are being used for what are really one clone, i.e. pieces of one original plant.
But as tulip growers we are already familiar with this peculiar practice: after all, all of those double early tulips which originated as sports of ‘Murillo’ form one big variable clone: they are all pieces of one original seedling.

Before addressing the ethics of selling and growing virus infected tulips, I would like to hear what others (in addition to Maggi) have to say about this. But I can’t resist making one observation: although it is possible that there will be purchasers of these bulbs who do not understand what they are buying, I’m inclined to doubt that this will happen too often: have you seen the prices asked for those tulips? One would have to be very free with their money to buy these without wondering why one bulb costs as much as dozens of bulbs of normal tulips.