Wild tulip

Tulipa sylvestris, the wild tulip, is a bulbous perennial of the Liliaceae family with a native range stretching from Portugal and Morocco eastward across the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and central Asia to western China, and naturalised in many parts of central and northern Europe. From a slim ovoid bulb up to three centimetres across rises a slender stem twenty to fifty centimetres tall, bearing two or three narrow, channelled, blue-green leaves clustered toward the base. In April and May the stem produces one or occasionally two long-pointed, star-shaped flowers, the six tepals bright yellow within and often flushed and streaked greenish-red on the outer surface, the flowers gently nodding in bud and held upright when fully open. The species reproduces chiefly by bulb offsets, as the flowers rarely set viable seed.