120 GENERAL BOTANY 



for, that a new bulb or continuation of the root-stock 

 is formed to carry on the plant to the next season, 

 and to provide for its new shoot. We can see from 

 this that, if we wish to move a bulb or root- 

 stock from one place to another, we should do . it 

 at the end of the growing season, and after all the 

 leaves have withered and fallen. To move a bulb 

 while it is in flower, as people, who, finding a pretty 

 flower growing wild, and desiring to have it in their 

 garden, so often do, must nearly always prove a failure, 

 because the bulb is then at its weakest, and as the 

 roots are destroyed in the moving, the plant suffers 

 severely. 



We can see too, that the larger the bulb or tuber, 

 and the more the water and food material packed in 

 it, the stronger and larger will be the new shoot and 

 leaves that spring from it, and therefore the more 

 food will the new plant be able to make, and the 

 stronger and more numerous the seeds that it can 

 distribute. 



A horizontal rhizome has this advantage o\ 7 er a 

 vertical root-stock, a corm or a bulb, that the whole 

 plant moves on just a little each year to a fresh piece 

 of ground. 



Runners and stolons are more useful still, for they 

 start new plants growing well away from the parent, 

 providing them with food and water from the mother- 

 plant, till they are sufficiently rooted to take care of 

 themselves, and reproduction thus takes place more 

 quickly and more certainly than by seeds. Gardeners 

 make use of this habit to propagate many useful or 

 ornamental plants, as the Strawberry, Raspberry, 



