Bulbs: Shirley tulip, 1 by naturepatch

naturepatch wrote:
Well...I think I'll join in the confusing fun. My lily flowering, parrot, and fringed tulips have been flowering nicely for several years. Some are better at surviving for many seasons. Shoot! When I was a kid, my neighbor had a variety of tulips abandoned in the woods that kept coming up for years. If you want them to keep coming back, don't remove the foliage and buy tulips labeled 'good for naturalizing'. Those will usually increase. Here's an additional thought to throw in the mix. Some tulips are very prone to 'spliting'. This means the bulb separates into a group of smaller bulbs, which will eventually all increase in size and produce blooms. Some only do it every few years, others might do it right after blooming. These are probably the ones most often called the 'throw-aways', as some people don't want to wait the year or two between blooms. They don't die, they just split and look like ugly foliage for a year or two. And, if you like a well manicured garden...into the compost bin they go.
So...the question is simply how often will they split, and there is no reliable answer. The best for consistant blooms would probably be the species tulips. I'd recomend the lily flowering ones after that, as mine appear to keep blooming even when they split. And, so far, so are the parrot and fringed. But maybe they just like my heavy clay soil. :)
Don't know if this helps any.
And here's a photo of a group of lily flowering tulips that went from 5 bulbs to the number of blooms in the photo in one year.

naturepatch