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 landscape of the northern Sprawl woke confused memories of childhood for Case, dead grass tufting the cracks in a canted slab of freeway concrete. The train began to decelerate ten kilometers from the airport. Case watched the sun rise on the landscape of childhood, on broken slag and the rusting shells of refineries.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“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 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)