I live in Massachusetts, I finally have flowers pointing there noses after this endless winter.
I have a few tulips in my front yard and, like last year, once the flower bloom and opens up a little I find them neatly cut off and on the ground.
I don’t think it is a kids prank, it seems to be a clean cut and I am thinking it’s a animal eating “something” inside the flower. The petals are still there… and the stem nice and straight flowerless…
It is very strange, any ideas?
Totally misread that OP.
No, Mr. Bunny! Stay away from that flower bed–Noooooo!!!
deer eat tulips, but will also eat the stem and leaves.
I’m with toadspittle - I’d buy some of those tulips for my yard! Actually, it sounds like Zazie would, too. I’m sorry that I can’t help you with the OP - I have no idea. Doesn’t happen to ours (in NH).
(“animal-eating tulips”, btw … just realized I didn’t make that so clear)
I did find out last summer that squirrels eat begonias. I had two pots of them on my deck, and the squirrels just kept snacking on them throughout the summer. If I saw them doing it, I’d scare them away, but I couldn’t be watching them 24/7. The white ones were particularily yummy, but they’d eat the pink ones, too. Once it was fall, I just let them eat them–they are annuals, so they were going to die anyway.
I don’t have any tulips, but if you have squirrels, that’s what I’d suspect.
haha guys, you got me laughing here!! Animal-eating…
Maybe it is squirrels, I don’t know, we for sure have a lot. I was thinking skunks for some reason,but have no proof.
Grrrr, it’s the second season in a row…
It could be some kind of invertebrates; cutworms (a caterpillar-like grub that lives in or on the soil surface) tend to eat just the parts of plants that are exactly at ground level, leaving the stem and upper parts toppled over exactly as if they have been cut - I’m not sure if they eat tulips though.
Otherwise it might be squirrels, but in this case, the bulbs themselves will be gone.
The stem is intact, the leaves as well, just the very top, the flower is cut off. It is the weirdest thing… I need a night vision camera 