AND THEIR CULTURE. 



79- 



flower is produced. In the autumn these two scales produce in their 

 axils buds in the same way as in Lilium, one of which produces the 

 flower stem of the following year ; and on the outside they are 

 wrapped in two or three membranous tunics, which have never pro- 

 duced leaves or fulfilled any nutritive function. This type of structure 

 is scarcely varied through about half the genus Fritillaria, and it is 

 this type that is distinguished in the synopsis of the genus as the 

 tunicated lulb (2). 



' ' But in the American Fritillaria there are no outside tunics, and the 

 scales are numerous, not large and flattened as in Lilium, but small 

 granules as thick as wide. 



" Upon this difference, Dr. Kel- 

 logg has proposed to separate the 

 American Fritillarias, as a genus, 

 under the name of Liliorhiza, but 

 there is no difference in flower 

 structure between the Old "World 

 and New World species, while the 

 bulb of the New World Pudica is 

 sometimes barely distinguishable 

 from those of the Meleagris group; 

 and we get the Liliorhiza group 

 represented in Asia in Kamtschat- 

 kensis and in the Old World F. 

 Imperialis and Persica, which 

 were classed as Lilies by the 

 pre-Linnean authors, we get a 

 large, perennial, squamose bulb, 

 without any tunic, not materially 

 different in any way from that of 

 Lilium, with the scales as thin, 

 but not so regularly formed, Bulb of Fritillaria Eecunra. 



and broader at the base ; so that it will be seen that Fritillaria,. 

 which has been little studied from this point of view, presents 

 great variety and much interest in its bulb structure, and runs over 

 the line of transition which separates the squamose (or scaly) from the 

 tunicated (or coated) type. 



(3). "The third type of structure, an annual laminated tunicated' 

 bulb, runs with much modification, as regards the number and thick- 

 ness of the laminae and the texture and persistence of the tunics, 

 through Tulipa, Calochortus, and Lloydia. In all these, radicular 

 fibres are developed from the stem on the underside of the bulb only, 

 and at the end of the flowering season the old stem may be traced 

 down to its base quite slender and cylindrical, with all the nutriment 

 absorbed from the leaf bases that have nourished it ; and outside of 

 it, within the same external tunic, stands the bulb, well developed, 



