200 NOTES ON LILIES 



interior structure of the bulb, as well as the flower itself. These side- 

 buds, though they have been made a great deal of by some writers, cannot 

 be placed under any other category than that of * adventitious buds,' for 

 they present themselves without any order, and the exact spot where they 

 may present themselves cannot be foreseen. It will, therefore, be seen 

 that those who deal with the propagation of the Lily by seed, bulblets, or 

 buds in the axils of the old scales entirely overlook the marvellous organ 

 and its functions which Nature has provided for carrying on the hereditary 

 reproduction of the plant, for the central seed-bud alone is all-sufficient to- 

 continue to reproduce annually the Lily and its bloom, even if seeds, bulblets, 

 and all sorts of adventitious buds were never to have any existence. In 

 fact, we every year see this result in our gardens, though we never dream 

 of searching or looking for the cause. 



" As a practical, and almost tangible, illustration of the truth of what 

 I have said, I annex a photographic representation of the interior and 

 reproductive organs of offsets, bulbules of one, two, and three years*' 

 growth, and fully developed bulbs, collected during the first two weeks in 

 May last from clumps of a dozen or more distinct species of Lilium. 

 proper." See paper and woodcut in Garden, vol. 14, p. 60. 



REPRODUCTION OF LILY BULBS. 



22. " The act or process of reproducing that which has been destroyed is y 

 with respect to the cultivation of the Lily, well worthy of the careful 

 consideration of all Lily growers, more especially as we see at the present 

 time that opinions differ most widely with regard to the wonderful opera- 

 tions of nature in the reproduction and increase of these deservedly 

 popular plants. We are told that a new bulb, whether grown from seed 

 or bulblets, takes not less than three years, under the most favourable 

 circumstances, before it developes a flower-bearing stem. We are also 

 told that raising seedling Lilies is a long process, as one must wait from 

 three to ten years ere they bloom, and we are moreover taught to believe 

 that it is this very same seedling or bulblet that grows year after year- 

 larger and larger, until it becomes a flowering plant, and that the bulb 

 goes on then living for an indefinite number of years, sending up each 

 year a flower stem from its centre. This may appear to many to be a 

 very plausible doctrine, but how it has become the belief of so many Lily 

 growers is difficult to understand. If we lift a clump of Lily bulbs we- 

 often find a whole colony of small bulbs, popularly, but without discrimi- 

 nation, called offsets. When we carefully examine them, however, we 

 find they are not all real or genuine offsets, but that they consist of offsets 

 and the offspring of offsets, properly called successional bulbules. A 

 genuine offset is not furnished with all the characteristics of a fully 

 developed bulb, but, though deficient in some respects, it is possessed of 

 this important function, namely, the power of generating a successor in 

 the shape of a bulbule or small bulb. With respect, therefore, to the 

 powers of reproduction, it is important to bear in mind that no plants or 

 gome into existence without a parentage. An offset no larger 



