Experimenting with tulips 🌷

Let’s do some flower science.

There’s a lot of beliefs and old wives tales associated with flowers and floristry. They’re just expected and go unchallenged.

Like putting a pin hole in a tulip to stop it drooping.

There’s some people who absolutely swear by it. So last year I did some tests. You might remember my flower food test.

At the same time I experimented with tulips. In five different pint glasses I put a single tulip. For whatever reason, one of the pint glasses didn’t make it into this photo.

These were the different tests:

• Penny in the water

• Pin hole in the stem below the flower head

• Nothing (the control tulip)

• Cut daily with clean, sharp scissors

• Warm water when I initially added the flower to the pint glass

All the tulips were delivered on the same day, were the same variety and from the same wrap. During the test I kept them all in the hallway, at the same temperature and out of direct sunlight. I left them for seven days.

The results:

Penny
Third for least drooping after warm water and daily cutting. The flower looks okay. The flower head wasn’t smushed against the table.

Pin hole
I sterilised the pin before I used it to prick a hole, to make sure no bacteria got into the flower. I think this one fared the second worse, after the one I did nothing to. The stem just seemed to give way to the weight of the bloom. Slimy and kinda green water. Totally flopped and drying petals. Second worst water condition by the end.

Nothing
Interestingly, the one had the worst water. The water was almost luminous, totally flopped and drying petals.

Cut daily
This really highlighted how much the stem continues to grow! Cleanest water, drooped but not touching the ground. Yellowing leaves. I really love the shape of the stem tbh.

Warm water
After the daily cutting one, this was the least dropping - it didn’t hit the table. Third worst water. Lost some petals too.

Thoughts:

I need to rerun the experiment where I do a daily check and photograph them daily. I think I would do two of each as well, because the vase life of a flower is really dependent on it’s growing conditions. It’s tulip season now, so I’ll buy another bunch and report back.

When I got this wrap of tulips in they were really cold to the touch, and the studio was fairly warm. In the first day I remember there was loads of movement. If anyone has any links to information about the effects of temperature on tulips I’d love to read it.

What are your thoughts on tulips? Do you have a method that you swear by? Let me know if you try your own experiment!

With love and squeaky tulips,

P.S. Did you enjoy this? My latest episode of my podcast Flowers & Folklore is out now and it’s all about tulips. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts and lots of other places.