78 NOTES ON LILIES 



bulbs are strictly determinate and monocarpic, the main axis elongating 

 into a flower-bearing stem, and the bulb, the cycle of existence of which 

 is from one to three years, either dying or remaining, but in either case 

 developing a new bulb in the axil of one of its scales.* All the plants- 

 of this tribe are able, in a state of nature or under cultivation, to- 

 hold their ground and increase more or less by means of bulb repro- 

 duction, independently of being multiplied by means of seed. 



In the structure of these bulbs we may define four leading types : 



1. The Sqnamose Perennial Bulb, as exemplified in the Old World 

 species of Lilium. 



2. The Tunicated Bulb, as in the Old World species of Fritillaria. 



3. The Annual Laminated Tunicated Bulb as in the Tulipa, Calochortus^ 

 and Lloydia. 



4. The Tunicated Corm as in Gagea, &c. 



" In what is called a Perennial Squamose Bulb the old scales remain, 

 and a new bulb is developed into a flower-stem in their centre ; in the 

 third and fourth types the old scale or scales die, and the new 

 floriferous stem, is developed outside them. Secondly, we get in the 

 tribe, side by side with a general uniformity of flower structure, every 

 range of transition, from a typical squamose bulb (Lily) through a 

 typical tunicated bulb (Tulip), to a tunicated corm (Erythronium), 

 the difference between them depending upon the breadth and thick- 

 ness of the enlarged bases of the leaves, their duration, their 

 uniformity or difference in texture, whether they all, or some only, 

 grow out to produce leaves aboveground, and whether some only, or 

 all, are dilated below the surface into reservoirs of nutriment. 



Bulblets or Bulbillse quite similar in structure to those produced in 

 the axils of the underground leaves, are regularly present in the axils of 

 some of the leaves of the stem in Lilium Bulbiferum and L. Tigrinum,. 

 in Fritillaria Macrophylla, and in the Mexican species of Calochortus, 

 and are occasionally developed in some other Lilies if the inflorescence 

 be injured'' The nearest allies of the Lilies are the Fritillarias, in 

 most of which we get a v'ell marked type of structure, for which I am 

 not aware that any distinctive name has been proposed. Take the 

 bulb of Fritillaria Meleagris at the flowering season and we find as- 

 follows : in the centre, the flower producing stems, bearing from its 

 base, but not above the bulb as in Lilium, a tuft of slender radicular 

 fibres. Tightly pressed against the base of the flower stem are a 

 couple of hemispherical scales, not thin and flat as in Lilium, but half 

 as thick as broad (say half an inch broad and a quarter of an inch 

 thick), rounded on the outside, flat 011 the inside, where they are 

 pressed against one another and the base of the flower stem. These 

 are the bases of single leaves, homogenous, not at all laminated in 

 structure. From the summit of each, before the development of the 

 flower stem, arises an oblanceolate leaf, which dies down before the 

 * Or at the point of insertion of the stem with the rootstock. 



