Tulipa schrenckii
Meadows of wild Tulipa schrenckii, also known as Tulipa suaveolens, or Schrenck's tulip, would have been familiar to Chekhov during his childhood in Taganrog on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia and his later travels through the Ukrainian and Russian steppe lands.
Tulipa schrenckii was first described in 1794 by Albrecht Wilhelm Roth in the "Annalen der Botanik" (ed. Usteri) as Tulipa suaveolens. The Latin adjective suaveolens means sweet-smelling. Its flowers are bowl shaped and varied in color. They can be red, pink, mauve, yellow, orange or white. There are also bicolored blooms, including one
variety with red petals bordered in yellow or white.
This tulip is found in the Eurasian steppe, where it can flower thickly, as far as the eye can see, even sometimes in semi-deserts. Its native range is extremely large and includes southern and eastern Ukraine, Crimea, the European part of Russia (especially on the lower Don), around the Sea of Azov, major parts of southern Ciscaucasia (North-Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and in the former Chechen-Ingush region, Terek, northern Dagestan), in the southeast of Voronezh Oblast, major parts of Volgograd Oblast and Saratov Oblast, southern Samara Oblast, Orenburg Oblast, western and northern Kazakhstan, the lowlands of western Siberia, Central Asia and China. It is also grows in western Iran and Azerbaijan.
In Russia and Kazakhstan Tulipa schrenckii is a protected species.
Photographs of Tulipa schrenckii follow in the post entitled More Tulipa Schrenckii.
Photograph: Tulipa schrenckii, Wikipedia.
Cover Photograph: A protected area bordering Lake Manych-Gudilo, The Republic of Kalmykia, Russia, Wikipedia.
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