Tulipa sprengeri

Walk in the woodland garden through the Hamamelis sp or in the Mediterranean garden and you will see the beautiful intense scarlet flowers of Tulipa sprengeri. This is the last of the tulips to flower, often at the end of May but earlier with milder winters. It is rather tall at 35-45 cms and carries distinctive narrow, shiny green leaves with slim flower buds before opening its flowers.

The flowers are about 7-10 cms in diameter, bright scarlet with a rather paler bronze exterior and yellow contrasting anthers. They leave slim ribbed seed pods to scatter their seed and emerge in two or three years, freely naturalising in part shade and moisture retentive soils, as they have done in the Botanical Gardens. It is very hardy, easily grown and makes a very colourful addition to most gardens growing well in a range of soils and full sun or dappled shade.

Now extinct in the wild, it originates from the Pontiac mountains in northern Turkey. The species is named after the notable German botanist and plantsman Carl Ludwig Sprenger (1846-1917), who bred and helped introduce many new plants such as T. sprengeri into the horticultural trade. He was a partner in Dammann and Co, a nursery in Naples where he lived from 1877 to 1907. T. sprengeri was listed as new in their catalogue of 1895.