Species roll call
This tulip’s flowers, at about 20cm tall, are a fetching pinky-lilac with a large, conspicuous yellow zone in the centre of each bloom. It wants a really good summer baking, in the ground, to flower well in spring. What’s really curious about
T. saxatilis is that it’s stoloniferous, meaning that the bulb sends out lateral stems called stolons. These appear like green knuckles above ground, almost as if coming up for air, before heading underground again to form new bulbs. It’s therefore one tulip that is capable of forming large colonies. Its response to sunshine is extraordinary, opening up so wide you think it’s in danger of spontaneously dismembering itself. This tulip can’t help but make you smile.
Tulipa saxatilis
Known as the lady tulip, this species has long, elegant buds the colour of coconut ice, and the foliage is almost grassy, it’s so fine and narrow. I like it best in bud, but the flowers open, on warm sunny days, to strikingly large, porcelain-white stars with deep red stamens, about 20cm tall. One cultivar, ‘Cynthia’, has gorgeous red and creamy yellow flowers. I think that if I could only grow one species, this would be it.
Tulipa clusiana
This species bears grey leaves pencilled with a fine red edge, which is lovely in its own way, but this is so upstaged by the flower that the leaves rarely rate a mention. The flower buds are nearly perfectly triangular when viewed from the side, being flat and wide at the base but tapering to a perfect point. They are also triangular when looked down on from above. The flower colour varies around a gorgeous pale apricot (a colour I’m always reluctant to admit I love, deeply, in flowers). T. batalinii is very short when it starts to flower – probably no more than 7–8 cm – but, like many tulips, the flower stems lengthen over time during flowering, to about 15cm. This is a plant I never want to be without.
My favourite form of this tulip carries the repellent name of ‘Honky Tonk’ (inset). But everything else about it is irresistible, from the pale lemon buds that slowly flush with pink like a ripe peach, to the inside of the flower, which is a thrilling acid yellow.