Tulips can be grown from the seeds produced by their blossoms, but it will take years for a tulip started this way to become big enough to flower. (Plus, the seeds of some hybrids are sterile.) Dividing up a bulb is a much faster way to get a mature plant that is ready to blossom for a customer. So for bulb farmers, the goal is to have tulips spend energy feeding bulbs, not sustaining blossoms that attract pollinators to fertilize the plant and stimulate seed production. That’s why a tulip’s head is cut off soon after a blossom is produced. (In other words, farmers direct how the plant will reproduce, favoring bulbs over seeds.) Note the petals lying on the ground to the right of the mature tulips. While machines chop most of the heads, farmers go in by hand afterwards to pluck any that the machine missed.