Dutch Tulip
A Dutch Tulip Can Come in Many Varieties
If you wish to buy a Dutch tulip bulb, you will have to decide between dozens and dozens of varieties. The Dutch have been hybridizing tulip bulbs since the 1800s and they offer practically unlimited choices. Every year they export in the neighborhood of seven billion tulip bulbs, most to the United States and Germany.
So, exactly what are your choices when selecting a Dutch tulip? If you order a catalog, you will be overwhelmed by the choices. You can have a Dutch tulip in single colors, double colors, double flowers, fringed, short or tall, weather and disease resistant. In the 1800s when Tulipmania took over all of Holland and people were paying up to $100,000 for certain varieties, among the most popular and highest priced was a Dutch tulip that had shades of a second color. These first tulips with two colors were grown by accident when a mosaic virus made discolored waves on the tulip blossom. The virus was harmless except for adding a second splash of color.
Soon a Dutch tulip was being grown as a hybrid with a second color added. And then color variations became more varied. Today a Dutch tulip may be striped. It may have one color on the outside of the flower and another on the inner part. It may even have highlights of color around the edges, such as a red flower with a yellow line around the edges. You can also have tulips that have both brilliant color and quiet pastels that mix with one another in the same flower.
When choosing a Dutch tulip, you need to remember that there are hundreds of species and many hundreds of hybrids. One of the most popular is the Darwin Hybrid tulip. While some tulips are not consistent in coming up every spring, you can count on this hybrid to come up again and again for many years. It is also very weather resistant. One of the largest available, this Dutch tulip can grow stems up to 22 inches high and four-inch flowers.
The Darwin Hybrid tulip was introduced to the world by Dutch breeder D.W. Lefeber. He crossbred a Madame Lefeber tulip with several of his Darwin tulips to produce this hybrid. Not only is it large and colorful, it is a Dutch tulip that is hardy enough to withstand many plant stresses. Until recently, they were the number one choice in cut flowers. The Darwin Hybrids come in many colors--orange, red, yellow, pink--and can have any number of different colored stripes and designs.
If you are interest in this Dutch tulip, names include, among others, Impression, Apeldoorn, Ollioules, World’s Favourite, Jaap Groot, Beau Monde, Floradale, Beauty of Apeldoorn, Silver Stream, White Clouds, Gordon Cooper, and Golden Apeldoorn.