AND THEIR CULTURE. 81 



near the surface of the soil, about midway between the corm and 

 apparent basis of the solitary opposite pair of leaves. The offset 

 works downwards, sometimes remaining short, sometimes lengthening 

 out, and its apex dilates into a new corm. 



"The squamose perennial bulb, as exemplified in all the Old World 

 species of Lilium, consists, in its mature form, of a large number of 

 thin, flat, lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate scales tightly pressed, 

 against one another, face to back, and spirally arranged around a 

 central axis, which is not produced, either vertically or horizontally. 

 From the under side of the central axis proceeds downwards a dense 

 tuft of fleshy fibres, and from the upper side is produced the flower- 

 stem of the year, its lower part, between the summit of the bulb and 

 the surface of the soil, giving off copious radicular fibres, which 

 assist greatly in procuring the nourishment and strengthening the 

 hold upon the ground of the developed flower-bearing stem. This 

 underground root-bearing portion of the stem above the bulb is often 

 vertical, but in some species, as for instance Leichtlinii, will creep 

 for a length of 6 inches, so that, if grown in a pot and the bulb 

 planted in its centre, the stem will spring up from the side of 

 the pot.* All these numerous flattened scales of the bulb 

 possess potentially the power of developing new bulbs in their 

 axils, and will do this, in some species at any rate, under cultivation, 

 if a bulb be broken up and properly treated; so that what with 

 bulb -reproduction and what with seed -reproduction, a skilful operator 

 may in three or four years multiply fifty-fold his stock of a desirable 

 species or variety. But in a state of Nature there is only one new 

 flower-bearing stem developed each season from the centre of the 

 bulb, and a few from the axils of the decaying outer scales. A new 

 bulb, whether grown from seed or from bulblets developed in the axils 

 of the aboveground leaves of the floriferous stem, or produced in the 

 axil of one of the bulb-scales, takes not less than three years, under 

 the most favourable circumstances, before it developes a flower-bearing 

 stem. The first season we get an ovoid mass, perhaps a quarter of 

 an inch in thickness, composed of half-a-dozen tightly imbricated 

 scales, which sends out three or four slender radicular fibres from its 

 base. At the end of the next summer we have a bulb as large as a 

 Hazelnut, with a copious development of strong radicular fibres from its 

 under side, and the half-dozen scales prolonged above the soil into a 

 rosette of oblanceolate leaves. Next year, if circumstances be 

 favourable, the flower-bearing stem is developed; and then, if nothing 

 untoward happen, the bulb goes on living for an indefinite period, 

 sending out each year a flower-stem from its centre and shredding 

 off old scales with buds in their axils more copiously in some kinds, 

 less copiously in others from the circumference all round. In two 



* It has been seen to come up 2 feet from the bulb, thrusting itself through a gravel 

 walk. 



