It is undeniable that the hybrid tulip is a work of art. They are relatively new to the world of horticulture,though,  only arriving in Europe around 1554. It was the merchants and travellers of the Silk Road, along which many species of wild tulips grow, who brought them to the West, in particular Istanbul, as early as the 12^th century.

My love of tulips certainly sprung from a love of the cultivated garden variety, yet my admiration of and frustration with species tulips is what persists. Still I can’t help but plant hybrids every year. Anna Pavrod calls the wild tulips “willfully variable” and notes that “ establishing clear links and breeding lines is a problem” with all the hybrids we see today.

Certainly at this point the hybrids are being hybridized with the hybrids. And what is genetic chaos has created a kaleidoscope of beauties for the spring garden in temperate climes.

Here are a few of my favorites, at least this year:

There is nothing like the rich colors achieved by hybridizers .‘Jan Reus’, remains one of my all time favorites for that incredible and indescribable color.

Equally saturated of color is the lustily black-purple ‘Havran’.

By now everyone knows of my pension for red and white tulips.

I grew ‘Leen van der Mark’ for the first time this year. It looks like a artfully flayed radish, but what I found really beautiful about this tulip was how it aged, the white turning soft pink and the red turning a lovely merlot. And it held up for a long time in our abnormally hot spring.

This single ‘Burning Heart’ has been reblooming in my garden for years now, its elegance not marred in the least by the weedy bed it inhabits. A true classic, and my absolute favorite.

Then there is “Grand Perfection”. Need I say more?

If red-and-white isn’t your thing, there is always purple-and-white like ‘Rembrandt’s Favorite’. These “broken” tulips are really what started the whole 16^th century tulips craze and the subsequent obsessive hybridization of tulips.

Sometimes it seems the hybridizers have gone mad. ‘Miami Sunset’–a tulip would never live in Miami–has all the audacity of a tropical flower. What colors!!

Still there are many lovely tulips that remain close to their wild ancestors.‘Analita’ is part of the Fosteriana Group of tulips, small, early and beautiful.

‘Taco’ looks to me like a Tulipa clusiana hybrid but it is thrown in the Miscellaneous Group, a testament to the genetic confusion that tulips have become.

Even with all extraordinary beauty —did I use the words “beauty” and “lovely” enough in this post — of the hybrid tulips, it is the simple charms of the true species which keep me enthralled. Tulipa linifolia has returned reliably for me. I grow it in a pot with the yellow leaved hosta ‘ On Stage’.