"Vox Humana" wrote in I think what happens is that
over time the stronger bulbs survive and the
rest die. In your case, the yellow ones won the battle of natural
selection. I bought a lot of bulbs on clearance last fall and kept the
packages after planting them. To my surprise, several varieties of the
tulips were completely different colors than the pictures and descriptions
on the packaging. If you planted one color of lily and another color
appeared, then there might have been a packaging mistake. I got several
packages of Dutch iris that were suppose to be mixed colors. I planted
each
package in a different location. Nearly all of them were the same color -
not a mix of colors. Again, either a packaging mistake or the mix was not
random enough to yield packages with a good distribution of colors.


I would agree with the survival of the fittest theory. In my area, tulips
are fairly reliable as long-lived perennials, some living for decades, which
I realize is not the case in many parts of the country. However, over time,
tulip beds will end up being yellow and red. The pinks, whites, purples,
and stripes, except for the orange black stripes, are either shorter lived,
or when they multiply making little bulblets, those bulblets are not
reliably the same color.