Patriotic Tulips not Delivering on Canada 150 Colours–Send me your Pictures!

 

Home Hardware is reporting all is not well with the red and white tulips. Bill Slade just told me he has had reports from his brother they came up orange and purple. Home Hardware is asking each customer who bought the orange flowers to provide the time and location of their purchase as well as a photo, so that the company can work with the supplier in the Netherlands to figure out what went wrong.

Send me your pictures so we can see what colours are blooming– PM me or email me at sav_77@yahoo.com. 

Theresa Fritz , councillor of Carleton Place said:  “One of my colleagues at the paper who bought some Canada 150 Tulips (not in CP) was told that if you planted the bulbs in a bed with others tulips they would not bloom red and white. If you planted them in a new bed, they would be red and white. I have seen your writings about these tulips and thought I would share what I was told”.

Signs of Spring in Carleton Place– saw this on Jennifer E Ferris’s FB page–
So I planted 25 of the Canada 150 tulips in the fall, for this spring. Looks what’s growing! 

 

Update –May 5th–2017– Jennifer Ferris’s tulip

Send me pictures of your tulips when they come up as I am “curious yellow” what colour is coming up.

Patricia M Mason Leduc–Linda as promised here is a few pics of my Canada 150 patriotic tulips that have come up so far. Definitely NOT White and Red–Appears there may be a wide range of yellow/red colour variations.

Jen Lytle–I can debunk the “planted with other tulips theory” I live on 50 acres and this was the first time I planted tulips.  I bought 5 boxes!  We also planted them in memory of a dear friend that passed away, the look of the tulips were totally her style so as they were available to purchase right after her passing we planted them in her memory.  The surprise was on us..  not one looks the way they are suppose to and they are all coming up different.

Julia Thompson—I got mine from the Carleton Place Nursery Ltd – they’re coming up red and white

 Katelyn Kimberley got yellow and white too as well as Sheona Craig‎

Jen Toop’s in Smiths Falls

Colleen Bouchard got some red and white tulips.

Photo-Colleen Bouchard

Photo-Colleen Bouchard

Vicky Murray spotted this one on a Carleton Place walk

 

 

Brenda Mattey–Mine are yellow! Lol. Were supposed to be 150th red and white

Kerry Charlebois sent these photos and a photo from our nation’s capital below.

My fiance and I went to the tulip festival yesterday- this is the Canada 150–Jessica Doxey

Patriotic tulips not delivering on Canada 150 colours

Home Hardware received reports of Canada 150 tulips blooming in orange and yellow, instead of red and white–  CLICK HERE FOR STORY

But horticulturists agree that the mystery of the orange tulips is more likely a simple case of mislabelling than a hybridization problem.

They were most likely a result of  logistics and mixing up some different varieties of bulbs with the Canada 150 that were supposed to be put in the box,” gardening expert Mark Cullen told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “This isn’t a hybridizing problem or it would be much more widespread.”

Cullen said there can be “mild variation” in colour and pattern within a variety of tulip. In rare cases, more noticeable genetic mutations can occur through a process of natural hybridization. But Cullen said hybridization has become a precise process and neither of these explain how drastically different the orange flowers are from the intended red and white.

Egan Davis, a horticulturist at the University of British Columbia, said that, while the tulips farming process is highly mechanized, human error is most likely to blame.

“At the end of the day, the bulbs are in the field and it’s a person who identified which bulbs are going into which package,” he said. “It’s unfortunate because the right bulbs are somewhere, but they didn’t end up in the right bags.”