Pretty hard to give a specific ID just based on the photo but one can make suggestions for tulips of similar coloring. The ones in the back look like 'Pink Impression'. In the foreground, the lighter purple tulips could be any of a dozen or more different varieties - 'Purple Lady', 'Purple Rain', 'Singapore', 'Othello', 'Passionale', etc. The darker purple variety could be 'Negrita' or 'Queen of the Night'. And it's almost impossible to discern what the blue flowers are......much too small a photo to work from. Need a close up!! But you could get the same effect by interplanting with muscari or blue hyacinths. But they look more like blue flowered pansies to me.

It will help to know specifically where you live. Here in my Deep South Zone 7 I must chill my tulips for 8 to 10 weeks before planting. They need this process if they are to bloom. The sprouts are not great, but in the end, they won't hurt anything. Go on and plant the hyacinths in the ground as soon as you can. (I always count out the 8 to 10 weeks on my calendar from the day I put the tulips into the fridge. That way I don't forget when to plant them.) Keep the tulip bulbs away from fruit. The ethylene gas the fruits emit will kill the tulip bloooms.

I'm certainly no stranger to being disagreed with, but to conclude that because two trees died and they had it must have been the freeze/thaw cycles is not logical. Consider the logic, which mirrors what you are saying: Your friend Joe is scratched by a cat while visiting another friend. Two days later he comes down with a fever, then dies. You conclude he died from cat scratch fever, never stopping to consider that it could have been any one of hundreds of other maladies. In the case of the trees you must consider other possibilities and have some means of eliminating them before you adopt a reason that is contrary to known science, which would be a considerable uphill battle. Other possibilities for the demise of the trees: Too wet Too dry The roots were exposed to killing low temps Not enough energy reserves going into winter Insect infestation Disease Others Besides - you relate an anecdote about two trees that died from unknown causes, and an experienced grower relates that >100 trees he overwinters in an unheated garage which see repeated freeze thaw cycles, not to mention the several trees (only the hardiest pines & junipers) that remain outdoors above ground all winter and that see dozens or repeated freeze/thaw cycles do NOT suffer ill effects from the freeze/thaw, so logic tells us, even w/o science, that the likelihood of my observation being the more accurate is much greater. Now - getting to the science ..... this is a copy/paste job from something I contributes to another thread a while back: Commonly, each species of plant has a general range of cold-hardiness. Within species and cultivar, cold-hardiness is genetically determined. That is to say that a plant that is propagated from cuttings or tissue culture will have the same ability to resist cold as the parent plant. Plants cannot "develop" a greater degree of cold-hardiness by repeated or prolonged exposure to cold, even after 100 years (trees). If we pick any plant at random, it may or may not be able to withstand freezing temperatures. The determining factor is the plants ability to prevent freezing of bound water. Bound water is the water inside of cells. There are actually three kinds of water to consider when we discuss "freezing". The water held in soil - When this water freezes, and it can freeze the soil mass solid, it doesn't necessarily kill the plant or tissues. Then there is free or unbound water, also called inter-cellular water. This is water that is found in plant tissues, but is outside of living cells cells. This water can also freeze solid and not kill the plant. The final type of water is bound water or intra-cellular water. If temperatures drop low enough to freeze this water, the cell/tissue/plant dies. This is the freeze damage that kills plants. Fortunately, nature has an antifreeze. Even though temperatures drop well below freezing, all plants don't die. In hardy plants, physiological changes occur as temperatures drop. The plant moves solutes (sugars, salts, starches) into cells and moves water out of cells to inter-cellular spaces in tissues. These solutes act as antifreeze, allowing water in cells to remain liquid to sometimes extremely low temperatures. The above is a description of super-cooling in plants. Some plants even take advantage of another process to withstand very low temps called intra-cellular dehydration. The roots of your trees can stay frozen for extended periods or go through multiple freeze/thaw cycles w/o damage, so long as the temperature does not fall below that required to freeze intra-cellular water. If roots remain frozen, but temperatures remain above killing lows, dessication is the primary concern. If the tree is able to take up water, but temperatures are too low for the tree to grow and make food, stored energy becomes the critical issue. Dormant and quiescent trees are still using energy from their reserves (like a drain on a battery). If those reserves are depleted before the tree can produce photosynthesizing mass, the organism dies. There are a number of factors that have some affect on the cold-hardiness of individual plants, some of which are length of exposure to seasonal cold, water availability (drought stressed plants are more cold tolerant), how recently planted/repotted, etc No one can give a definitive answer that even comes close to accurately assessing the temperature at which bound water will freeze that covers the whole species. Unbound water is of little concern & will usually freeze somewhere around 28*. Some material will be able to withstand little cold & roots could freeze/die at (actual) root temperatures as warm as 25-27*. Other plants may tolerate much colder actual root temperatures - as low as 10*. There's just no way of knowing unless you have a feeling for how cold-tolerant the genetic material the plant was derived from might be, and finding out is expensive (from the plant's perspective). ;o) Another example of this genetic variance is that trees found growing and fruiting well closer to the equator need no chill time, while other trees, derived of genetic stock from a more northerly provenance may need a period of chill to grow with optimum vitality in the subsequent growth period/cycle. It's wise to remember that root death isn't instantaneous at one particular temperature. Roots succumb to cold over a range of chill with cultural conditions affecting the process. The finest roots will die first, and the slightly thicker and more lignified roots will follow, with the last of the roots to succumb being the more perennial and thickest roots. Since any root death is a setback from an energy allocation perspective, and root regeneration takes valuable time, it's probably best to keep actual root temperatures in the 25-40* range as long as we can when the tree is resting, even though the organism as a whole could tolerate much lower temperatures. Even well established trees become very much like cuttings if all but the roots essential to keep the tree viable are lost to cold. Regeneration of roots is an expensive energy outlay and causes the trees to leaf out later than they normally would and shortens the natural growth period and reduces the potential increase in biomass for the next growth cycle and perhaps beyond. Sorry for the detour, Joann. The 5" liner will be fine. I use shallow bulb pans almost exclusively. Use a soil that drains VERY well, and try to be sure the bulbs are not touching when you plant. The volume of soil in the container is an insignificant factor. A larger volume only increases the length of time it takes for the soil to fall to the same temperature as the surrounding air. It doesn't change how low the actual soil temperature will eventually drop to, which is the critical issue. FWIW - large containers resting on the ground do gain some advantage from geothermal heat, but in the case of tulips, it wouldn't be enough to ensure their survival. Take good care. Al

I plant at least 200 new tulips every year plus about one third from last year I dug and refrigerated. If they are 12 centimeters or larger they will bloom the second year. Some of mine are on the fourth year and are in bloom now. From the first of September to the first of December they are in the refrigerator, both the new bulbs and the old from last year. It only takes an hour to dig them up the end of April. Only the month of April are they unsightly and if you can't stand that you can dig them soon after the bloom and compost them. Al