See Union Square transformed into a garden of 100,000 tulips

Union Square was transformed into a pop-up tulip garden on Saturday for American Tulip Day. Union Square was transformed into a pop-up tulip garden on Saturday for American Tulip Day. Photo: Filipa Ioannou/SFGATE Photo: Filipa Ioannou/SFGATE Image 1 of / 39 Caption Close See Union Square transformed into a garden of 100,000 tulips 1 / 39 Back to Gallery

A line of tourists and locals snaked around a multicolored display in Union Square on Saturday afternoon, waiting for the chance to pick a bouquet of tulips from a pop-up garden of 100,000 of the flowers brought in for American Tulip Day.

Click through the gallery above for pictures of the garden

The tulips stood in black plastic crates grouped loosely by color; swaths of oranges and purples, pinks and whites, waved in the wind that whipped through a Union Square that was sunny after days of rain.

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It was an ideal backdrop for a selfie, a fact not lost on many of the people in attendance, who mugged in front of the small sea of flowers, holding up their own colorful bouquets.

The flowers were grown in America from Dutch bulbs, according to organizers for American Tulip Day. The pop-up garden was created as an American spin-off of an event that's come to Dam Square in the center of Amsterdam every year since 2012.

All kinds of containers were being improvised as flower-carrying contraptions; grocery store tote bags were a popular choice, but people also carefully loaded their flowers into everything from trash bins to baby carriages.

As the afternoon wore on, the black plastic crates that housed the flowers grew barer, but in the surrounding streets, flashes of color could be seen bobbing along and spilling out of bags as people carried bouquets home on BART and on buses, bright against the winter greys.

Filipa Ioannou is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at fioannou@sfchronicle.com and follow her on Twitter