The tulips that were once "priceless" turned out to be infected with a virus?

When people talk about the Netherlands, they naturally think of tulips. In fact, the Netherlands is not the origin of tulips. Tulips are native to Central Asia, West Asia, the Mediterranean coast, and some mountainous areas in India. The Netherlands began to introduce and plant tulips in the late 16th century. From the perspective of plant taxonomy, tulips belong to the genus Tulipa of the Liliaceae family and are herbaceous plants with bulbs.

It is said that during the Second World War, there was a famine in the Netherlands in the winter, and many refugees survived by eating tulip bulbs. As a result, the Dutch loved it and even regarded it as the national flower. In addition to the Netherlands, tulips are also the national flowers of Türkiye and Hungary.

Tulips are originally pure in color and have many beautiful names, such as the flaming red "Spartacus", the pure white "Prisma", the deep night "Queen of the Night", the light yellow "Golden Oxford", the pink "Prestige", and the aqua red "Dynasty".

Later, during the cultivation of tulips, some varieties with variegated patterns appeared. The characteristics of variegated flowers are that each petal has different mottled or striped patterns; the colors are mostly a combination of two of the four colors of purple, red, white and yellow; the shapes are various, some are star-shaped, some are striped, and some are flame-shaped and feather-shaped.

Variegated tulips are more fascinating than single-color tulips, so the Dutch valued them more. In the 17th century, there was even a trend of planting variegated tulips. Many of them are rare and priceless.

The "Eternal Augustus" is the most valuable one among them. Many people believe that only the "Eternal Augustus" deserves the praise of the most beautiful flower in the world. According to records, in 1637, a "Eternal Augustus" was sold for nearly 7,000 Dutch guilders. It should be noted that the average annual income of the Dutch at that time was only about 150 Dutch guilders.

With such a sum of money, even a riverside mansion in Amsterdam can be chosen at will. If we use the cheese that the Dutch love as an example, then its value is equivalent to more than 20 tons of cheese. This shows how crazy the Dutch love it.

The flowers of variegated tulips are exceptionally beautiful, but the appearance of their patterns is difficult to control; even the offspring grown from variegated tulip bulbs may not necessarily have variegated patterns; even if patterns appear, the patterns will not be consistent with those of their parent plants.

Records of variegated tulips can be traced back to the 16th century. In 1593, Austrian Carolus Clusius (director of the Royal Herbal Garden in Vienna and a well-known botanist) introduced it while in charge of the Botanical Garden of Leiden University in the Netherlands, and recorded the various patterns and colors in detail.

Carolus Clusius

Although he noticed that variegated tulips would become extinct due to fragile bulbs, he never found the reason why the variegated pattern trait could not be stably inherited.

It was not until the 1930s that Cayley and McKay (both plant pathologists) confirmed that the breathtaking variegated pattern was due to infection with tulip variegation virus (a member of the genus Potyvirus and can be transmitted by aphids).

As a result, some Dutch flower growers began to try to use grafting to infect healthy tulip bulbs with diseases, and then cultivate varieties with mutant flowers, in order to realize their dream of getting rich.

Plant viruses are so tiny that they cannot be seen under an ordinary microscope. They can only be seen through an electron microscope. They mostly parasitize plant cell tissues and reproduce by replication.

Plant viruses are mobile and can be transported along with organic matter to infect other parts of the plant. In plants infected with viruses, anthocyanin synthesis is disturbed to varying degrees, resulting in uneven distribution of anthocyanins. It is not surprising that some color stripes with sharp contrast appear.

In addition, tulips have another "honor", that is, the first plant viral disease recorded by humans came from tulips.

Flower lovers' love for tulips can be said to be based on the "morbid beauty", and the creator of this is the virus, which used to be notorious. It can be said that without the role of viruses, there would be no colorful tulips, and these small ones can also become the beauty of flowers.

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