Pink Tulips and Pink Daffodils Are Not the Same Color

Many of you gardeners already know that 'pink' daffodils aren't exactly pink. Not mauve or bubble-gum pink, at least, like these tulips. So no matter what the catalog/website picture shows, you have to plan for peachy-pink or coral-pink daffodils.



I caught all these pictures in my dad's backyard when we visited for Easter. His garden, just 100 miles away in Moses Lake, is several weeks farther along than mine.



Over the past couple of years he has planted a new bed in the middle of the backyard, and when we visited there were several hundred daffodils in bloom along with tulips, a few hyacinths and fritillaria.



I used techniques from my last post when shooting these pictures. Since the house shades this bed right before sunset, these pictures were taken at about 5 pm with the sun behind the flowers. Aren't these true pink tulips dreamy?



But even more dreamy were the hundreds of daffodils in bloom. I ordered these next photos to show the progression of color as the double daffodils open and then fade over several days.



You can see that these 'pink' daffodils open a pinkish-orange color. I forgot to ask my dad which hybrid these are, so I can't name them, sorry.



The flowers in the background are blurry because I mostly used a 1.4 f-stop. Maybe a couple of photos go up to 2.0, but not any higher than that.



And the backlighting makes the flowers and background glow, just as Jose Villa promised. Don't you just feel warm when looking at these sun-filled shots? Me too, despite the rainy grey weather outside my window right now.



Anyway, as the daffodils age the peachy-pink color softens and softens . . .



. . . until the flowers are mostly white with a pastel pinky-peach center. Still not bubblegum, or even cotton candy, and definitely not mauve. But a pretty color nevertheless.