Tupila batalinii & linifolia
John Grimshaw (Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:22:12 PST)

Tulipa batalinii is treated as T. linifolia Batalinii Group by the authorities of the RHS Plant Finder: they are not always right, but do at least draw their opinions from the best sources. The cultivars are treated as members of this group, T. linifolia Batalinii Group 'Apricot Jewel' and so on.

I cannot argue the case beyond saying that as I see them, there is a continuum between the pale yellow batalinii and the scarlet linifolia. I think one always has to remember that commercial clones are just that, amenable clones that propagate and flower freely; it may be very difficult to perceive the true range of wild variation from such plants that may be at distant ends of a spectrum.

John Grimshaw

Dr John M. Grimshaw
Gardens Cottage
Colesbourne
Nr Cheltenham
Gloucestershire GL53 9NP

Website: http://www.colesbournegardens.org.uk/

----- Original Message -----
From: <Antennaria@aol.com>
To: <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:17 PM
Subject: [pbs] Tupila batalinii & linifolia

It was written:

Tulipa batalini has made more than one
list from more than one area. It was
on my list. John has pointed out that
it really is a clone of Tulipa
linifolia. We probably need to fix that
on the wiki. Do you have a suggestion
John for how we can write it to
distinguish between the beautiful red
flowered ones and the ones you can
still buy commercially as T. batalini
with all the shades of yellow? Would
it just be Tulipa linifolia (yellow
clone often referred to as T. batalini)?

It is my understanding that Tulipa batalinii and T. linifolia are two separate species, taxonomically recognized as such, and are quite distinct and easily recognized. Granted, Tulipa taxonomy is a mess, but perhaps no more a mess than most other genera.

I'd doing the combination Alpine-L /PBS topic of the week for in Febraury, on Dwarf Tulipa, so I hesitate to open up a big discussion on this now and dilute the topic too early on. But I will offer some bits of info:

1. A useful recent publication (albeit in Czech) is a taxonomic paper by Petrova E. Faberovai, Descriptor List - Genus Tulipa L., published in 2000. The PDF accessed from the link below, while in Czech, has pages 18-20 in English, with the latest enumeration of species and synonyms, a blurb on taxonomy, and a short bibliography. Since I can't read the rest, I can only conjecture that a portion of the species is listed here, not the entire genus of ~150 species. In this paper, the two species in question are listed as two separate species.

http://genbank.vurv.cz/genetic/resources/…

2. Another good source is the Hoog and Dix website:
http://www.hoogdix.com/
Click on Descriptive Catalog, then on Tulipa. This firm is directly responsible for many of the old, now famous bulb selections, along with Van Tubergen. The listing of species is fairly exhaustive, with brief history on each, and it's a valuable resource in own right.

3. I think the linifolia confusion comes from the fact, at least one of the cultivars of T. batalinii, namely 'Bronze Charm', reputedly derived from a cross with T. linifolia and introduced by Van Tubergen. Many of the other cultivars derived from "sports" in cultivation, or garden pollinated seed. Thus batalinii has a reputation of not being "pure" these days, but some specialty dealers sell the pure species and advertise it as so.

4. Tulipa linifolia is a quite well known and distinctive species. When the flowers open out flat, the tepals are so wide that the form a stunning rotate flower, yet with the ends of the fat tepals abruptly contracted to a fine pointy tip... unmistakeable. It's also always startling because of the shiny brilliant red flower color, with jet black center. Tulipa batalinii on the other hand has yellow flowers (apparently somewhat variable shades of yellow in the wild), with upright cup-shaped or open lily-flowered blooms. They look VERY different.

For these reasons, I think the wiki images on these two species should rename unchanged, although I will add to my photos of batalinii 'Bronze Charm' that there is probably some linifolia blood in that cultivar.

Mark McDonough
Pepperell, Massachusetts, United States
"New England", near New Hampshire
USDA Zone 5
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