BULBS AND BULBLETS

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CHAPTER XVIII. BULBS AND BULBLETS

“After attaining the requisite degree of strength the buds of certain plants leave the parent stalk and, if we may so express it, emigrate; that is to say, they detach themselves and take root in the earth, to draw nourishment directly therefrom. Now it is evident that a bud designed for independent development cannot have precisely the structure of one destined never to leave the parent stem. To satisfy its first needs before roots capable of nourishing it have been sent down into the soil, it must of necessity have a certain prepared store of nutriment. Therefore every bud that emigrates carries a supply of food with it.

“There is cultivated in gardens a pretty little lily native to high mountains, bearing orange-colored blossoms, and known as the bulbiferous lily. Here is a piece of the stalk with its buds situated in the axils of the leaves. These buds must pass through the winter and develop the following spring. They are covered with succulent scales, very thick, tender, and fleshy, good for nourishment as well as for protection. This store of provisions makes the bud quite plump. Toward the end of summer some of these buds leave the mother plant; they fall at the [90]slightest wind, scatter on the ground, and are henceforth given over to their own resources. If the season is a wet one, many of them, still in place at the axils of the leaves, send out one or two little roots that hang in the air as if trying to reach the ground. Before October arrives all the buds have fallen. Then the mother stalk dies. Soon the autumn winds and rains cover the scattered buds with dead leaves and mold. Under this shelter they swell all winter from the juices of their scales, plunge their roots into the ground little by little, and, behold, in the spring each one displays its first green leaf, continues henceforth its independent growth, and finally becomes a plant like the original lily.

“The fleshy, scaly buds destined to develop independently of the mother stalk are called bulblets. No plant known to agriculture could furnish us so striking an example of bud-emigration as the bulbiferous lily; but in our kitchen gardens we have garlic, which acts in almost the same way. Take a whole head of garlic. On the outside are dry, white wrappings. Strip these off and underneath you will find large buds which can easily be detached one by one. Then come more white wrappings followed by new buds, so that the entire head is a package of alternate wrappings and buds.

“These wrappings are the dried-up lower portions of the old leaves of the plant, leaves blanched where the soil covered them, and where they still remain, and formerly green where exposed to the air, though that part is now lacking. In the axils of these leaves [91]buds have formed according to the general rule; only, as they are destined to develop by themselves, they have stored up supplies in their thickened scales, and that is what makes them unusually large. Split one of them lengthwise. Under a tough sheath you will find an enormous fleshy mass forming almost the whole of the bud. That is the storehouse. With such supplies of food the bud is well able to take care of itself. And, in fact, when a market-gardener wishes to raise a crop of garlic, he does not have recourse to the seed; that would take too long. He turns his attention to the buds; that is to say, he plants in the ground, one by one, the bulblets of which the heads of garlic are composed. Each of these bulblets, sustained at first by its own reserves of food, puts forth roots and leaves and becomes a complete garlic plant.

“From the bulblet to the bulb, from garlic to an onion, there is but a single step. Let us split an onion in two from top to bottom. We shall find it composed of a succession of fleshy scales compactly fitted together. In the heart of this cluster of succulent scales, which are nothing but leaves so modified as to form a food-storehouse, are found other leaves of normal shape and green color. An onion, then, is a bud provisioned for an independent life by the conversion of its outside leaves into fleshy scales; and it is called a bulb, not a bulblet, because of its size, the latter [92]term being the diminutive form of ‘bulb.’ Bulb and bulblet differ merely in size: the bulb is larger, the bulblet smaller, and that is all.

“Every one has noticed that an onion hanging on the wall ready at hand for the cook, is awakened to life in the course of the winter by the heat of the room, and from within its envelope of red scales puts forth a beautiful green shoot that seems to protest against the rigors of the season and reminds us of the sweet pleasures of spring. As it develops, its fleshy scales wrinkle, soften, become flabby, and finally fall off in decay to serve as fertilizer for the young plant. Sooner or later, however, its store of provision being exhausted, the shoot perishes unless placed in earth. There we have a striking example of a bud that develops independently by means of its own accumulated supplies. The leek is also a bulb, but very slender in shape. Like the onion, it consists of a cluster of lower leaf-parts sheathed one inside another. Among ornamental plants having bulbs are the lily, the tulip, and the hyacinth.”

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