'Red Bouquet'
Multiflowering Tulip
The Cypress to the Tulip spake: "What bliss
Seest thou in sunshine, dancing still like this?"
"My cup," the Tulip said, "the wind's lips kiss;
Dancing I hear the Song without a sound."
-Sir Edwin Arnold
(1832‚1904)
(1832‚1904)
We got this from John Scheepers whose catalog says 'Red Bouquet' is a Konijnenburg & Mark sport of 'Orange Bouquet.' The Dutch firm of Konijnenburg & Mark is one of the two leading producers of the multiflowering, bunch-flowering or "bouquet" tulips.
Each stem of multiflowering tulips fork to produce three to seven flowers, so that it takes only a few bulbs to make a great many blossoms, making them favorites of cutting-gardens. There is all but invariably a central stem with one flower larger than all the subsidiary blooms on tributary stems.
'Red Bouquet' is intensely scarlet, with a canary yellow base. It is a single late May-flowering tulip with egg-shaped blooms which are among the last of the tulips to fade out of the garden before summer. They stand on average twenty inches high.
This tulip does not naturalize & can usually be counted on for good flowering for two springs running, after which the bulbs will produce less or not at all, though sometimes leaves will appear for years to come, fooling the gardener into expecting more flowers.
Since it is not longlasting in the landscape, we decided to try 'Red Bouquet' as a container plant, & planted ten large bulbs in a big wooden bucket.