If you haven't alrerady noticed, I'm kinda (tiringly, I know, I know) obsessed with the out-of-doors right now. I've been hacking away at hills in my back yard, rescuing the hundreds of non-blooming tulips from hard-packed nutrientless earth, and hefting big rocks hither and thither. I got a vision y'all, and can't seem to blink.
Part of the vision, maybe 1/6th, maybe 1/8th, maybe even 1/11th, is tulips. Now hear this clearly my boos: I never thought of myself as a tulip feller. No. I was a big banana-leaf tropical rainforest hot wet hobbesian jungly kinda feller. See, my compass points only south. Literally & metaphorically both. But life has a way of containing yr dreams and turning yr fantasies.
I used to think tulips were big whoring short-lived beetroot tricks: pop out for a spring-heat quickie with a boatload of color and a big honking stamen and pistil fuckfest. Spring is in rut enough without these harlots helping us.
But then... well,,, you know, you just can't hold out forever. Their charm won me over. First the solids... Big pools of deep red and white... but then last year, for the first time, signalling the very end of my last bit of resistance, the funky ones.
Not mottled or dappled or variegated or anything stupid like that. But broken. That's what some people call them. Most know them by the aka "rembrandt."
One source says this: "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."
True Rembrandt tulips are now illegal to sell, as result of this effects of the virus on other plants. But mock-rembrandts are available, and I'm guessing that's what I have in my back yard. Here is a picture. Suck on it good and long brothers and sisters. For it is purty.
Tags: Tulip Virus Rembrandt
