Broken Tulips Today
Today, tulips like Rem's Sensation displaying a "broken" effect are stable variants and the result of breeding, not viral infection, although many tulip fanciers feel these "modern" variants are a poor substitute when compared to the long-extinct rare cultivars like Semper Augustus. Modern tulip varieties infected with the virus are fragile, and are usually much smaller than normal healthy blooms, with a reduced stem length. There are only a few varieties of older, truly "broken" tulips still in existence, but only because the worst aspects of the virus have somehow remained benign. One such example is the rare Absalon which dates from 1780; a "bizarre" colored variety, it displays gold flames against a dark chocolate brown background.
Read more about this topic: Tulip Breaking Virus
Famous quotes containing the words broken, tulips and/or today:
“The human spirit will endure sickness; but a broken spirit—who can bear?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 18:14.
“There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind—he had been so for such a long time—but I swear that I do not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)