Buying Tulips for Valentines day

My wife loves tulips. During the course of my familiarization with tulips, I learnt that there are tulips and then there are the tulips. What I mean is there are basically 2 types of tulips: those that last at least a week and those that die within 2 days. I went to the fresh flowers cold storage section at Far East Flora (Thomson nurseries) to have a look, and after a few trials and errors and some bucks spent, I learnt that:

The ones that last longer have more petals, are slightly more expensive and paler in colour. The ones that do no not last have fewer petals and are cheaper and brighter in colour. The reason why both types of flowers look fresh in the cold storage is because of the extreme cold. But once you take them out into the sun the cheaper ones will start to open up almost immediately.

So there you go....Hope you dont have to find out the hard way like I did...In anyways tulips are one of the hardest flowers to keep because they dont last very long. By the time they are flown from Holland they are already tramautised. I wonder why my wife has such exquisite taste.....sigh...