UPPER EAST SIDE — With an unseasonably warm winter, the stems from 60,000 tulip seeds planted in November along the Park Avenue malls are peeking up a month early.
This year's tulips are Darwin hybrid and Golden Oxford, the Fund for Park Avenue announced Thursday.
The fund — which raises private money to beautify Park Avenue's malls — makes its tulip choices based on different reasons.
In 2009, for instance, the orange Blushing Apeldoorn tulip was selected in honor of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in New York Harbor. The white Ivory Floradale tulip was planted in 2010, to symbolize the fund's 30th anniversary.
Stems for Park Avenue's tulips were already peeking out on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2012.
So, why yellow for 2012?
"The honest truth is we were due for yellow," Barbara McLaughlin, president of the Fund for Park Avenue, said.
"I have a chart with a rotating roster of colors. We go through white and orange and yellow and pink and multi-colored. It keeps Park Avenue fresh."
Yellow last made an appearance on the mall in 2007, McLaughlin said.
They chose a Darwin hybrid because a pink variety of that hybrid planted last year proved hearty and lasted a long time, she said.
"It's not easy out there for the tulips, unfortunately," McLaughlin said. "They have to put up with a lot."
The flowers, which come from a nursery in Long Island, usually bloom mid- to late-April, but with the stems making early appearances, McLaughlin is on the lookout for early bloomers.
The tulips will have some attention-grabbing company. Ten sculptures by Venezuelan artist Rafael Barrios will be installed on the mall between 51st and 68th streets from early March through June. Barrios' sculptures appear to be three-dimensional at a distance, but are actually extremely thin, two-dimensional pieces of coated metal.