Tulips: The Varieties, and Why They Keep Moving

Tulips are the only flower most people buy that visibly rearranges itself overnight. They grow after cutting, they bend toward light, and they open and close on a daily cycle. Almost every complaint about them is a description of normal behaviour.

They Keep Growing

A cut tulip stem is still living tissue and continues to elongate in the vase — commonly by two to five centimetres over a week, occasionally more.

So an arrangement built tight and level on Monday is taller, looser and asymmetric by Thursday. Nothing has gone wrong.

Two consequences. Cut them shorter than looks right, because they will make up the difference. And do not build tulips into a mixed arrangement where they need to stay level — they will overtake everything else and stand proud of it.

They Bend Toward Light

Tulips are strongly phototropic and will lean toward the brightest source, continuing to do so for their whole vase life.

Rotate the vase a quarter turn each morning if you want them upright. Or place them where light comes from one side and let them lean, which is the better answer at home — the drift is the most characterful thing they do.

What does not work is fighting it after the fact. A tulip that has bent will not straighten.

They Open and Close Daily

Tulips open in warmth and light and close in cool and dark, repeating this for days. A bunch that looks wide open at four in the afternoon will be tight again by morning.

Clients report this as the flowers dying overnight with some regularity. They are not.

The genuine end comes when the petals stop closing and begin to reflex backward, which is when the flower is finishing.

The Varieties Worth Knowing

The commercial range is far wider than the standard single tulip most people picture.

Single and Triumph — the classic goblet shape, the largest commercial group, and the most durable.

Double — many-petalled, sometimes called peony tulips, and the closest thing to a peony available in March.

Parrot — fringed, twisted, feathered petals in extravagant colour combinations. The most dramatic and the shortest-lived.

Fringed — crystalline serrated petal edges, which read as unusual without being loud.

Lily-flowered — pointed reflexed petals on long elegant stems, the most modern-looking of the lot.

French — very long stems, large blooms, sold at a premium and worth it where height is wanted.

Our Mixed Tulip and Red Tulips sit in the single and Triumph range, which is where the reliability is.

Care, Which Differs From Other Flowers

Three things are specific to tulips.

Shallow water. Two to three inches. The stems are soft and will rot from the bottom up in a deep vase.

Cold water, and a cold room. These are a cool-season crop and treat warmth as a signal to finish. Vase life falls sharply above about 20°C.

No flower food needed. Bulb flowers carry their own carbohydrate reserve, so the sugar in a sachet does little. Clean cold water changed often does more.

The traditional trick for floppy tulips is to wrap the bunch tightly in paper, stand it in deep cold water for a couple of hours, then unwrap and arrange. The stems firm up and hold position. It genuinely works.

The Narcissus Warning

Tulips and daffodils are the classic spring pairing and the classic spring disaster.

Cut narcissus stems exude a sap that blocks the water-conducting vessels of other flowers, and tulips are the most vulnerable thing in the average spring bunch. Put them straight into the same vase and the tulips collapse within a day or two for no visible reason.

Condition the narcissus alone for at least six hours, change the water, then combine — and do not re-cut the stems afterward, because a fresh cut restarts the sap.

Forcing Them Indoors

Worth doing once, and it needs starting in autumn.

Tulip bulbs require a cold period of ten to fourteen weeks before they will flower — potted in October and kept somewhere dark and cold, an unheated garage being ideal, then brought into a cool bright room in January. They flower a few weeks later.

The one thing that goes wrong is warmth too early. Bulbs brought into a heated room before the roots have developed produce leaves and no flower at all.

Buying Them

Buy closed, with green still showing at the petal tips. A tulip bought fully open has two days left.

Check the stems are firm and the foliage is not yellowing. And buy in quantity — tulips are among the cheapest flowers in season, they reward mass, and forty of one colour in a plain jug is the best value in the spring calendar.

The local season here runs from March into early May, with forced material from January. Outside that, they are imported and noticeably less good.