Tulip - a wonderful creation of nature - with its gentle charming bright beauty is an adornment of any flower garden, evoking trembling admiration and a feeling of sincere delight.
Enjoying great love, this culture is characterized by a chic variety of magnificent forms and shades. Glorified by many poets, the tulip has long won the hearts of most of the planet's inhabitants. Some even became avid collectors of its varieties, ready to give crazy money for a new variety.
Tulip flowers bloom in sunny weather and close in the evening.
Propagation of tulips in nature
Almost every person can please himself with such beauty. The main thing is to desire very much (dreams tend to come true) and, of course, to know how tulips reproduce. After all, the cultivation of this unpretentious crop requires compliance with certain planting rules and providing quality care. For the correct propagation of such a floral charm on a personal plot, one should understand how tulips reproduce in nature.
This happens by the method of so-called self-renewal, in which the maternal bulb, the obsolete season, is replaced by its replacement, and such a plant renewal is observed every year. The duration of this natural cycle can occur for 60 years or more. Many people may wonder how the steppe tulips breed. Is it really only in a vegetative way? In fact, the propagation of wild tulips also occurs with the help of seeds, which in each seed box can be up to 250 pieces.
Tulips on the site: how to breed
In the conditions of culture, the tulip came under the full care of a person who took care of the most convenient, vegetative method of reproduction: around the mother’s bulb are grown daughter (children) - the basis of the most beautiful future flowers. The largest of them is called substitute and replaces the mother's bulb, prone to withering away in the second year of life. The kidney of the main bulb, which will replace the mother, is laid very early and outstrips the remaining kidneys in development and growth. In it, replacing the bulb, the laying of both leaves and flower buds occurs.
Natural features of the tulip
At its core, a tulip is a clone of a previous plant, being its direct descendant. Moreover, in addition to the ability to bloom, the replacing bulb in passing inherits from the maternal physiological changes, caused by the accumulation of signs of aging, which, in the end, leads to the death of the plant.
Therefore, for quality reproduction, only lateral young bulbs of round, regular shape should be selected. A flowering adult bulb has 3-4 storage scales, at the base of each of which, as well as in the sinus of the integument, at the point of its junction with the base, a growth point is laid (similar to the formation of a kidney in the bosom of the leaf of an ordinary shoot). Each bud by the end of the growing season is able to develop into a daughter bulb. The development of growth points is uneven, and the number of formed bulbs in the mother’s nest depends on their storage conditions and growth characteristics.
Flower Tricks: How Tulips Propagate
High quality bulbs will become the most optimal planting material - the key to a beautiful tulip. To obtain the correct bulbs from the flower, the seed box should be removed, because if it is available, the plant spends most of its energy on growing the seeds planted in it, which will result in fading of the daughter bulbs.
Knowing how tulips reproduce, it should be remembered that when cutting the flower, it is recommended to leave several leaves that will serve as the bulbs for providing nutrients.
Digging Bulbs
Digging of onion nests, consisting of 3-5 bulbs, in the center of which next to the peduncle is the largest, replacing bud, is made in June – July (depending on the regionalization of the crop). The digging period must be correctly determined. Otherwise, if it is untimely, the bulbs will not have time to ripen, the scales will be insufficiently formed, and this will adversely affect the storage of planting material. If you are late with the digging of the bulbs, the latter can simply not be found in the ground, because the place of their growth when the plant withers becomes invisible, and this is fraught with the loss of a large amount of planting material.
Digging up the nests of the bulbs can be done when the leaves and stems of the plant are completely dry before they decompose. The resulting bulbs are recommended to be inspected for diseases or damage, whole and healthy specimens should be washed with running water, pickled in a potassium permanganate solution (about half an hour), dried in a dark place and final sorted prior to their further storage. Child small bulbs should be separated from the mother.
Tulip Bulb Storage
Tulip bulbs are stored in trays with the designation of each variety. In order to avoid damage by a tick, it is recommended to sprinkle the bottom of the landing trays with sulfur connected to the active copper preparation. In the first month - the period of laying a flower bud, the temperature of savings should be 20–25 degrees. Next, the temperature is reduced to 15-18 degrees. Children of tulips are recommended to be stored in a humid room, otherwise they will quickly dry out and become unsuitable for planting. Throughout the storage period, the bulbs are scanned, and rejects unfit for planting are discarded. Tulips are planted in open ground (or in a greenhouse) in the winter or early spring.
Vegetative propagation of tulips, based on their cultivation from daughter bulbs, is so familiar to most people that it is hard to believe in the ability of flowers to propagate by seeds.
The seed method of propagation of tulips
How do tulips propagate by seed? Tulips, like all angiosperms, after pollination form an ovary and seeds. If cultivars are grown from seeds, then the characteristics of the variety will not be preserved, and flowering will have to wait about 4-5 years. Therefore, seed propagation is mainly used in breeding work.
How do tulips reproduce when using seeds? To obtain a certain variety of
flower, pollination of plants is carried out artificially, aimed at the targeted crossing of pre-selected parent plants. For this, simultaneous flowering of plants is organized. If this does not happen, pollen must be collected and stored in a refrigerator in a paper bag. A couple of days before pollination, the anthers need to remove the anthers; pollination of the pestle is recommended to be done 2 times with a break of 2-3 days. Then the flower should be covered with paper so that re-pollination by insects does not occur. Seed collection should be done at the moment when the seed box becomes brown and begins to crack; otherwise, the seed runs the risk of being scattered on the ground. After harvesting, the seeds must be stored in the refrigerator at a temperature of + 5-8 ° C.
Tulip seed storage
During the winter period, for planted seeds, a low, but frost-preserving temperature is maintained. In open ground, sowing of seeds is done in the fall. In order to create an appropriate microclimate, many gardeners practice sowing seeds in boxes to a depth of 1-2 cm, where they will grow for 2-3 years. In spring, watering, loosening the soil and removing weeds on it should be made. Next, the ripened bulbs should be dug up and planted on the proposed place of constant growth. The flowering of such tulips will come in 5-6 years, and it will be nondescript. The peak of decorativeness in tulips grown from seeds will occur 8-12 years after planting seeds.
The flowering of young tulips allows you to select instances that fully meet the results of crossing. In the future, the propagation of tulips grown from seeds is done vegetatively.
Therefore, the question of whether tulips reproduce by seeds can be firmly and confidently answered - yes!
Which way is better?
Not many gardeners use this method in their practice because of its duration.
Knowing how tulips propagate, in which it takes more than one year from the formation of a seed to the formation of a full-fledged flower, flower growers are looking for easier ways for themselves. The most beloved and habitual is precisely the vegetative method of reproduction.