A tulip with a streaked color pattern like this is referred to as a broken tulip. This type of coloring was highly prized when tulips first came to Europe, around 1500. It is actually caused by a virus, the tulip breaking virus, similar to the tobacco mosaic virus. Horticulturists tried all kinds of things to obtain these patterns, such as cutting bulbs in half and grafting mix-matched pieces together, or soaking bulbs in wine before planting them.
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