This week, we ponder the question of how tulips are similar to lettuce and potato, delving into more recent but darker times where tulips helped save the day:
There is potential for domestication for consumption rather than ornamental purposes with the tulip, but that will be the subject of another post!
Great article!
I’ve been thinking I want to grow tulips as an edible ornamental for awhile now. I’ve given some petals and leaves a taste, and I found they were pleasant: just like a sweet lettuce, only thicker and crispier. Very nice garden snack.
I haven’t tried the bulbs. I read somewhere the bulbs taste like onions, and I strongly dislike onions. If they’ve been used as a potato substitute, however, that sounds more like a mild starchy flavor. Have you read a lot of reports of what tulip bulbs taste like? If so, what has the overall consensus been?
Thank you particularly for the notes about handling and being careful to remove the center part. Now I find myself wondering . . . if you cut off the edges of the bulb to eat, could you replant the center part, which contains the growing bud, in order to propagate more from it?
Thanks for your kind words. If I am correct, they’re relatively innocuous in flavour as they were used as a potato substitute rather than an onion substitute.
With regards to cutting the edges off the bulb, I reckon you could do this with an established plant in late spring - the idea being that you leave the plant time enough to build up the bulb again to be able to make it back out in the next growing season. Certainly worth a try.
Tulips are just one more example of us being surrounded by ornamental plants that have a hidden edible side. There are many more examples.
Yes, that sounds very promising! I have got to get my hands on some tulips now. (Chuckles.)
One of the reasons I want to grow them is that I’ve been paying attention to what my neighbors are growing, and tulips seem to be a common choice that does really well – without irrigation. Because they bloom so early that they get all the water they need from our late winter and early spring rains.
One of my neighbors has an unirrigated patch of tulips and echinecea in her front yard. In spring, it’s full of tulips. In summer and fall, it’s full of echinecea. This polyculture transitions from one looks-like-a-monoculture to another without any help from the gardener. Seems like an awesome way to set up an ornamental bed to me.
Yes, ornamental and tasty. If I were you, I would source some tulip seeds, possibly Tulipa montana. They will have extra vigor and you would side step any pesticides issues on the bulbs. Let me know how it goes!
Hmm, the Internet seems to think Tulipa montana is only perennial in zones 4-6, and I live in zone 7b. Think my summers might be too long, hot, and dry for them?
I would love to collect seeds from my neighbors’ plants, but all of them seem to deadhead them. (Wry chuckle.)
I would be surprised if they produced seed, the modern garden tulip is so highly bred and intensively cloned that it will rarely produce seed, much like the modern day potato. But still, worth a look.
On iNaturalist, there are three species of Tulips observed in Utah: Observations · iNaturalist
Of these, I would choose T. sylvestris as it’s hardy down to -20C (-4F) or more, and it seems that the seeds are widely available (in Europe) at least.
I have seen seeds available for garden tulips (not just bulbs) on Ebay. Do you think they’re legit?
Wild tulip sounds like a neat idea. As a fun breeding project, do you think they would cross with domesticated ones? I bet there are favorable traits in both species that I would like to have in my landrace.
Worth a shot, on both counts. Looking forward to your progress!
Something to remember with tulips is that after they flower the bulbs split into smaller bulbs. It takes 2 or 3 years for them to get large enough to flower again.
Of course I should mention the tulips were here when we bought the house in 92 and really have not spread much but I do have a few show up every year. What is interesting is that the flowers have gotten smaller over the years of neglect but they still are recognizable as tulips.
I believe what is happening with these domesticated tulips (and other domesticated bulb plants) is that they crowd themselves out so need to be manually dug up, split, and propagated. An interesting side effect of breeding for larger flowers that leads to larger bulbs to supply those flowers, and therefore the reduced ability to cope with doing their own vegetative propagation.
Interesting! So maybe tulips will benefit from being dug up and split apart, just like garlic, or sunchokes?
That would be awesome. Then harvesting and propagating could easily be part of the same step, which would be nice.
