While
the cup-shaped blooms on this popular selection are a clear
and appealing lilac-pink color, accented with yolk-yellow centers,
I find the green foliage to be too "fat" and course to keep company
with smaller Tulipa species. A better pink-flowered species that is
smaller and more refined is Tulipa
humilis.
In the photo below, we see a patch of narrow Tulipa
tarda foliage,
exceeded in height by the courser foliage of T. bakeri 'Lilac Wonder'.
This was an attempt at "succession planting", where more than
one species of bulb are planted together, to get a longer season
of succession flowering. The dried flowers are T. tarda can be
seen intermingled with the much taller stems of T. bakeri.
This species is from Crete, yet even so, it is reliably hardy
in my garden in northern Massachusetts. T. bakeri is most
closely allied to T. saxatilis, which is similar but paler pink.
It also shares a place in the Saxatiles section of Tulipa
along with T. humilis, with which T. bakeri
is often confused,
even though the two species are quite distinct, the latter
being a smaller, more refined, earlier flowering species. |
