Pink Silver Parrot Tulips

Silver Parrot tulips are silver-white with flamboyant fuchsia-pink petal edges and highlights. Its yellow-ivory marginated foliage is a sure sign that it is the child of New Design. (Did you know that the phenomena of marginated foliage occurs due to a lack of or insufficient pigmentation and chlorophyll in the plant cells on the outer petal edges? Parrot Tulips are so-called for their heavily frilled and scalloped, feathery-edged blooms in bright colors. Because the flowers are so full, they like protection from wind. Tulip is an enormous genus, consisting of approximately 75 species. Tulips are native to areas including the Middle East and the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. These regions have long cold winters and hot, bone-dry summers, and these are the conditions in which Tulips perennialize (or, in other words, return year after year) most successfully. In North America, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to replicate these climactic conditions, and as a result, we recommend that most Tulips are treated as annuals. Plant the bulbs in fall, enjoy their colorful blossoms in spring, and when the flowers subside, remove the plants, including the bulbs, and compost or discard them. The advantages to this ritual are three-fold: You won’t spend weeks of spring waiting for second- or third-year Tulips that don’t bloom; you won’t spend weeks eyeing yellowing and decaying Tulip foliage in your gardens; and you can look forward to the considerable delight of choosing new varieties, colors, and forms each season to refresh your display. All that said, there are a few Tulips that are more likely to perennialize than others. Species Tulips, sometimes referred to as “botanical Tulips,” have smaller, somewhat wilder looking flowers than the hybridized goblet forms, but they are more forgiving of milder climates, and they are known to return for two to three years in a favorable site. Long-stemmed, goblet-shaped Darwin hybrids have been bred to offer multi-year performance, and Fosteriana Tulips generally return for up to three years (and sometimes more) under ideal conditions. Wikipedia This image was captured at The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska MN.