Tulip 'Titian' - Is Google My Friend?

Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:23:42 PDT
Neat! Thanks Judy.

The illustration shows what I take to be a broken tulip (a tulip infected with color breaking virus). As far as I know, once virus infected, a tulip remains virus infected. So I don't think this tulip can be the tulip which I have hypothesized as the parent of the double 'Titian' and thus ancestor of 'Fringed Beauty' which is not infected with color breaking virus (or if it is, no one is taking the usual precautions to be taken with broken tulips).

On the other hand, maybe it is because back in those days the same name was sometimes used for the various manifestations of one tulip. In other words, if 'Titian' was the name of the original six-petaled virus free tulip (a breeder in the old terminology), perhaps the double flowered form originated before the virus infection took place. That would have meant that there were at least three forms of 'Titian' making the rounds: the original breeder Titian , the virus free double form "double Titian' and the virus infected single form seen ("flamed Titian") in the plate you provided.

We'll probably never know for sure, and thanks for helping to push the search back a bit further.

Jim McKenney

 


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