CHAPTER XVIII. 

 BULBS, TUBERS AND ROOTS. 



The plants next to be discussed are as well entitled to be classed as 

 herbaceous as those considered in the preceding chapter. They are 

 separated from their allies for convenience, because they make their 

 top growth not from a seed but from a resting stage in a bulb, which 

 is an underground dormant bud in which the plant has established the 

 potentiality of further growth or of flowering and stored food for it; 

 or in a tuber, which is a thickened stem or root or both; or in corms, 

 root-stocks, etc., of less distinctly rounded forms all performing a 

 similar office in carrying several dormant buds and the food supplies 

 with which they may begin subsequent growths. Amateurishly at 

 least, it may be suggested that there is some analogy between the 

 growth of the plants from all these forms, and from the seeds, which 

 the plants also produce, and therefore resembles the propagating of 

 other plants from seeds or from buds and grafts as outlined in 

 Chapters VI, VII and VIII. Bulbs, tubers and roots are parts of the 

 old plant and reproduce it exactly; seeds from bulbous or tuberous 

 plants have the same tendency to variation, natural or artificially pro- 

 duced, that is involved in other seeds greater or less according to 

 conditions and circumstances. 



California Conditions for Bulb Growing. Probably the botanists 

 would support a contention that California has exceptional conditions 

 for bulbous plants because of the many and uniquely fine native plants 

 which have that character of growth. The florists' trade demonstrates 

 the world's view of California native bulbs by the demand, which has 

 been developed from a little half-amateur collection and distribution 

 to a well organized business. The resident and traveling plant-lovers 

 proclaim the fact with characteristic exclamations, while the enthusi- 

 astic amateur gardeners have pitted the state with prospect-holes for 

 bulbs more abundantly than the miners ever did for gold. But proper 

 recognition of this subject does not rest with us: it belongs with the 

 botanists, the poets and the commercial collectors. We enjoy it all, 

 as an enthusiastic amateur should, but we do not try to teach either 

 facts or significance of it. 



From the gardening point of view it is, however, clear that our 

 vast wealth of native bulbs is being transferred to California gardens 

 more abundantly and successfully than hitherto, because the com- 

 mercial collectors are each year making supplies more available and 

 are distributing excellent suggestions as to how the conditions to 

 which these plants are born can be simulated in our gardens, and some 



