Their blooms don’t last for long, and the foliage hangs around too long—yellowing, then browning--while the gardener tries to camouflage it with later plantings. Deer and mice find them quite tasty (the buds and leaves for the big guys and the bulbs for the burrowers). In spite of all this, almost everyone enjoys seeing drifts of tulips in early spring, in colors ranging from white to black-purple and everything in between except blue. Some of the most beautiful are the Rembrandt class of tulips (for examples and botanical information see http://www.theplantexpert.com/springbulbs/Tulip9Rembrandt.html ) with their flames and stripes. Although Rembrandt himself is not known for flower paintings, many artists of the same time and place often included at least one tulip in their composite still life works, along with exotic insects, shellfish, and other flowers. Check out this gallery for examples of the work of one such painter, Jan Davidsz. De Heem, including Flower Still-life with Crucifix and Skull, 1630’s: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/h/heem/jan/ . Tulip Fever, a novel by Deborah Moggach, illuminates the period in which fortunes were made and lost by tulip bulb speculators; bulbs that would yield virus-affected or “broken” blooms like the one pictured here were particularly sought after. Every year in early spring, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York has a spectacular display of forced bulbs in the solarium, where this picture was taken.