I recently saw an observation that was IDing the disease that causes Tulips to color break. I know that more general diseases that can pass around independent of anthropogenic means can be wild but tulip color breaks have a history of cultivation. Also this color broken tulip was part of a bouquet of flowers so it seems like it was cultivated. Should I mark it casual?
What is the disease? There might be a flag on that species discussing this, or maybe there should be if there isnāt already.
Being in a bouquet would make it casual either way in my opinion (both cultivated and inaccurate location), but I think thereād be more debate about an example on a tulip in a garden.
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As far as I know, modern, cultivated ābrokenā tulips are due to the genetics of the tulip (maybe a transposable element or jumping gene) and not because of virus infection, so there should be no organism other than the tulip to observe there.
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No, the genetic mutation comes from a virus. The specific one IDed on the observation is Potyvirus tulipadefractum It is actually super interesting and I recommend reading The Botany of Desire if you want to learn about tulip breaking and the history of tulip cultivation. It is so interesting!
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The virus is Potyvirus tulipadefractum
In all cases of color streaking? Could you please show me where you read this? I was under the impression that the mosaic virus was only present in a few modern cultivars, like the Absalon cultivar. Itās illegal to sell them in many places. Most of the cultivars youād read about in the Tulip Mania era are long gone.
Sellers of Rembrandt tulips even use the fact that they donāt have the virus as a selling point: https://www.johnscheepers.com/flower-bulbs-index/tulips/tulip-mixtures/the-rembrandt-tulip-mixture.html
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So should I disagree with this personās ID? I am not sure about where they sourced their tulips from or what type of tulip it is meant to be.
Also, that is so fair about all cases of color streaking. I have no expertise on this topic and am only informed by the aforementioned book. I just saw this observation already IDed to species and didnāt consider that it may be incorrect. I was more interested in whether or not it should be marked casual because of my lack of expertise.
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Iām unsure whether or not to mark it casual, since the virus can be spread by insect vectors, but I think itās worth asking about the cultivar.
Looking through the āvirusā observations that are currently marked captive, it seems like a lot are
You should disagree if you think the ID is wrong; if you are unsure, you can try to find an expert or just leave it.
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It does seem like most growers prefer not to use virus-infected tulips because it kills most cultivars, and this page advises putting a physical barrier between them and normal tulips. I imagine farms that grow tulips for bouquets arenāt taking that risk.
Thereās a list of extant broken cultivars here but the image links are broken and Iām not sure if you can tell whether or not theyāre genuine just by looking at them. Generally it seems like fake broken tulips (āRembrandt tulipsā) donāt have quite as complex colouration or patterning.
This observationās notes specifically indicate that the tulip in question is one of the few historical cultivars infected by the virus that managed to survive the extinction that the virus usually caused to those cultivars.
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Now that Iāve read more about it, it seems like in the rare cases where the virus is still present in a tulip cultivar, the virus is there deliberately to induce that colouration so it seems like a clear case of being cultivated to me.
Since it seems like the virus can travel from plant to plant via aphids, theoretically if you noticed broken colouration on a tulip cultivar that doesnāt usually have it then you could make a valid wild observation of the virus.
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Yes, exactly, I was confused because I thought rlaortiz was saying that all tulips with that pattern were affected by the virus, which as far as I knew, was entirely untrue.
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