Everyone loves tulips - in the gloom of late winter they are the colorful harbingers of spring and summer. But when you buy them at the flowershop, or cut them from your garden, and put them around your house to cheer it up, they flop over, wilting listlessly and losing their positive impact.

We could use florists' wire to bind up the stem and keep the tulips upright, but that would show, and it would be a lot of effort to straighten up the whole bunch. However, tulips come with hollow stems.

So enter the tulip stiffener: a cunningly fabricated thin wooden rod, cut to the average length of a cut tulip and sold in packs of 20. Insert in the hollow stems of the tulips and restore their natural vigor.

Voilà, a beautiful bouquet of tulips, all standing as nature intended.

[N.B. not to be confused with green plastic straws sometimes placed around by stems by florists.]

[Also, this page was thoroughly Swiss-cheesed by the whole bwv thing, so all off-topic annotations related to that have now been removed.]
-- DrCurry, Jul 31 2004

<cough> http://www.halfbake...or_20green_20things
[po, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

//a....thin wooden rod//

A woody?
-- ConsulFlaminicus, Jul 31 2004


I think I got some spam like this.
-- Ander, Jul 31 2004


How do you prevent the skewer from exiting sideways out of the stem halfway up?
-- wagster, Aug 01 2004


Um, I believe I mentioned the stiffener is cunningly fashioned: the ends are rounded to avoid piercing the stem.
-- DrCurry, Aug 01 2004


You sure it's not the tulip that's cunningly fashioned?
-- bristolz, Aug 02 2004


maybe you could inject a liquid into the stem that would harden, like a glue type substance, or just dip the freshly cut stem into it, like how candles are dipped.
-- xclamp, Aug 02 2004


I've read that vodka in the vase will preserve flowers quite well. never tried it, though.
-- bristolz, Aug 02 2004


[Bris] It's to do with hindering the development of bacteria in the vase water. A drop of bleach works too (and you don't waste your vodka). Strangely, vinegar also works, as does plonking a copper penny in the water (Euro cents don't work as well). Also, the longer the flowers are out of water previous to being arranged, the more stem you should cut off. Something to do with an air bubble in the stem. Or so a florist told me.
-- squeak, Aug 04 2004


I'll bet they're absolutely gorgeous.

A new flower preservative brand name: Drunken Roses.
-- bristolz, Aug 04 2004


Ours use plain old aspirin. (Florists, that is.)
-- blissmiss, Aug 04 2004


UB: I have been given that bleach and sugar recipe by a Dutch flower farmer.
-- DrCurry, Aug 04 2004


Just wait till the hangover kicks in, though.
-- lostdog, Aug 05 2004


You know, [xclamp], I wish I had used the gender-genie link on your profile sooner. It accurately predicted her as female. For shame . . . I thought she was . . . uhm, well, a guy who likes guys. Anyway, I think the Tulip Stiffeners are a great idea [+]. My boss' office is littered with limp flowers.
-- contracts, Aug 06 2004



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