200 NOTES ON LILIKS 



interior structure of the bulb, as well as the flower itself. These side 

 buds, though they have been made a c^reat deal of by some writers, cannot 

 bo placed under any other category than that of ' adventitious buds,' for 

 they present themselves without any order, and the exact spot where they 

 may jDrcsent themselves cannot be foreseen. It will, therefore, be seen 

 that those who deal with the propagation of the Lily by seed, bulblets, or 

 buds in the axils of the old scales entirely overlook the marvellous organ 

 and its functions which Nature has provided for carrying on the hereditary 

 reproduction of the plant, for the central seed-bud alone is all-sufficient to 

 continue to reproduce annually the Lily and its bloom, even if seeds, bulblets, 

 and all sorts of adventitious buds were never to have any existence. In 

 fiict, we every year see this result in our gai'dens, though we never dream^ 

 of searching or looking for the cause. 



" As a practical, and almost tangible, illustration of the truth of what 

 I have said, I annex a photographic representation of the interior and 

 reproductive organs of offsets, bulbules of one, two, and three years' 

 growth, and fully developed bulbs, collected during the first two weeks in 

 May last from clumps of a dozen or more distinct species of Liliam 

 proper."^ — See paper and woodcut in Garden, vol. 14, p. 60. 



REPRODUCTION OF LILY BULBS. 



§ 22. " The act or process of reproducing that which has been destroyed is^ 

 ■with respect to the cultivation of the Lily, well worthy of the careful 

 consideration of all Lily growers, more especially as we see at the present 

 time that opinions differ most widely with regard to the wonderful opera- 

 tions of nature in the reproduction and increase of these deservedly 

 popular plants. We are told that a new bulb, whether grown from seed 

 or bulblets, takes not less than three years, under the most favourable 

 circumstances, before it developes a flower-bearing stem. We are also 

 told that raising seedling Lilies is a long- process, as one must wait from 

 three to ten years ere they bloom, and we are moreover taught to believe 

 that it is this very same seedling or hulblet that grows year after year 

 larger and larger, until it becomes a flowering jilant, and that the bulb 

 goes on then living for an indefinite number of years, sending- up eacb 

 year a flower stem from its centre. This may appear to many to be a 

 very plausible doctrine, but how it has become the belief of so many Lily 

 growers is difficult to understand. If we lift a clump of liily bulbs we 

 often find a whole colony of small bulbs, popularly, but without discrimi- 

 nation, called offsets. When we carefully examine them, however, we 

 find the}' are not all real or genuine offsets, but that they consist of offsets- 

 and the offspring of offsets, properly called successional bulbules. A 

 genuine offset is not furnished with all the characteristics of a fully- 

 developed bulb, but, though deficient in come respects, it is possessed of 

 this important function, namely, the power of generating a successor m' 

 the shape of a bulbule or small bullj. With respect, therefore, to the 

 powers of reproduction, it is important to bear in mind that no plants or 

 animals come into existence without a parentage. An offset no larger 



