This little yellow tulip, brushed with red on the outside of the petals, is very well adapted to the place it calls home: the windswept, hilly steppes of southeastern Kazakhstan (1,100m/3600ft). There are bulbs grown commercially in the Netherlands under the name T. kolpakowskiana, but they actually belong to a different, related species in the T. ferganica group. The real T. kolpakowskiana is difficult to cultivate.