How can tulips be so many different colors when they are the same plant?
It is for the same reason that people look different from one another. Part of our appearance (and that of a tulip) is genetically programmed and another part is due to environmental factors. The genetic code of the tulip has the information necessary to produce the chemical colorants in the petals of the flower (or lack thereof) allowing different tulips to express different colors. Humans have spent many years selecting tulips for color and other features to assure that certain tulips have the desired genes. In humans, things like eye color, skin color, etc. are encoded in the genes we inherit from our parents.
