People
here are saying that this spring is the only perfect one in memory. For me,
that’s a span of at least 40 years, about as long as I’ve really been paying
attention to weather, flowers, fruit trees, and gardens.
Everything
outside is so beautiful this year I’m drawn from the house several times a day
for a ramble. Who could resist the lure of this path to see what lies around
the curve?
This
year I’m especially captivated by the tulips. When I read Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, I understood the
sections on potatoes, apples, and marijuana, but I couldn’t appreciate the
section on the early 17th Century tulip mania. I couldn’t understand
how the European world became crazed with desire for tulips, but I now see that
was because I had never seen tulips in their glory.
In
the past, our tulip blossoms seemed to last about 15 minutes after an
unseasonal hot wind from the south fried them. Often the blooms were sparse or
malformed. For example, this parrot
tulip never amounted to a hill of beans in all the years it has been in my
garden. The flowers always were runty and mostly green. Take a gander at it
this year…
This
year every tulip bulb has produced several perfect flowers. Currently, along
with the parrot tulip, these dark pink ones are in their glory days.
Best
of all is a tulip I swear I never planted. It’s what is known in biology as a
“sport,”
A
plant or animal that looks strikingly different from its parent. I don’t know
whether it came from bulb division or a seed. (It could be a seed. I have been
neglectful about deadheading tulips in the past.) The only tulip near the sport
is a deep red one, about 4 inches away. There’s never been a white
tulip in my garden, so the white must be from a recessive gene.
I’ve
been reading about genes and mutation in Bill Bryson’s book, *A Short History
of Nearly Everything, and here it is, happening in my flower garden!
The
tulip season is nearing its end for this year. I am thankful to have lived to
witness it.
Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer
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