Variegated tulipomania tulip breaking virus mosaic virus green peach aphid flowers
Variegated tulips admired during the Dutch tulipomania gained their delicately feathered patterns from an infection with the tulip breaking virus, a mosaic virus that was carried by the green peach aphid, Myzus persicae. While the virus produces fantastically streaked flowers, it also weakens plants and reduces the number of offsets produced. Dutch growers would go to extraordinary lengths during tulipomania to make tulips break, borrowing alchemists’ techniques and resorting to sprinkling paint powders of the desired hue or pigeon droppings onto flower roots.
