Video: 'Exotic Emperor' Tulip | from Johnny's Selected Seeds

Good morning. I'm here in our field tulip trial. It's in full bloom right now, and there are a lot of beautiful varieties that we're excited to show.

This variety in front of me is 'Exotic Emperor'. 'Exotic Emperor' is an Emperor or Fosteriana type tulip. The Emperor class of tulips is known for being early to flower and having really large blooms. Exotic Emperor' is a little bit special in that class because it is double-flowering, and most Emperor tulips only have single flowers.

We really like this variety because it is one of the earliest to flower in our trials; and it holds well in the field — this plot in front of me has been blooming for almost a week, and you can see, hopefully, from the photos, just how large and full and double these blooms are.

The color is a really nice ivory, but with a little bit of cream, a little bit of green on the outer edges of these sepals, and then a little bit of gold at the center of the bloom as well. So it's a really nice range of ivory and cream shades.

We like it for its earliness and because of the the color range. With the earliness, it pairs really nicely with daffodils. We are at the end of our daffodil plantings right now, but this is a variety that blooms early in the field and can pair well with those daffodils.

Another thing that's really special about this variety is the fragrance. It's really fragrant and it has a beautiful citrusy or honey-type fragrance.

Another thing to note about 'Exotic Emperor' is that when it starts to color up and produce buds, the buds stay quite small for a while, so it can sometimes look like a little bit unimpressive compared to what they develop into later. So the blooms take a little bit of time to fully develop, but once they do, again, they form these really beautiful, full, large double blooms.

This is a good choice for a variety for perennial plantings if you're looking for something for a landscape or a garden setting. They perennialize fairly well, partially because they are closely related to wild tulips, so have some of that vigor.

Again, just a really nice variety and one that we have appreciate having in our assortment and in our trial for the past several years.