Nothing to loose..chances are they won't last long in a zone 8 garden no matter what anyway.
So...it matters little probably for only one year of bloom.

Your choices at this point is plant them, or throw them away. It is certainly worth it, to plant now. Al

make up a pot ... of moist media ... plant some bulbs ... leave them outside for a month or so.. full shade .. [is that long enough for a cold period????]

then bring them in.. and TEST THEM ...

why guess ...

but.. you dont mention your source.. and if they have already been cold stored .. or been sitting in bigboxstore.. since proper planting time ...

dont forget ... air temps.. have little to do.. with soil temps.. once planted ... especially in your zone ...

ken

Plant them. Period. What's to lose?

I have to be picky about what I plant because I have precious little planting space in my cookie cutter neighborhood. If there's very little chance they'll do well, I would save that area to plant some early spring stuff in a month or two.

Ken - I'm new to tulips and found out about the cold storage thing just recently. I bought them at Lowe's & Costco about 2 months ago, they've been sitting in my garage since then which tops out at prob 50-55 in the day and bottoms out in the low 40's, sometimes into the 30's, at night, and are in the dark 90+% of the time.

Definitely plant them, they'll be fine. Do it soon though or in your zone there's more of a problem they won't get enough cold in order to bloom properly.

You can plant them in pots and put them outside. If they do well, transplant into the ground. If they don't...you haven't given up any yard space.
Pick big pots that won't freeze all the way through, but the tulips will 'feel the cool' so they spring up!
Heidi

Plant 'em.

Our local area tulip festival (Pella) has a special way to deal with them them for the late spring festival. You can google it.

plant em'

dave

I planted some wildflower tulips indoors, the quality of the bulb makes the difference. Apparently mine like low light, after trying to get a good light schedule down, I just left them alone. I found they really gotta be deprived, a little overwatered, dried out well, lots of light to barely any and growth gets pretty encouraging with erratic temp fluctuation. the ones I forced trying to figure out anyway. So I have some more with some daffodils I am keeping colder to get to root well, in another pot, waiting to see the difference. the hormones in the bulbs seems a bit too high, but i don't know. these might die, but, maybe not. my conclusion is, too much light they get leggy, yellowish and life cycle too fast. maybe not enough cold. so as far as too late, i have no idea and assume the cold helps regulate bulb hormones for even growth.