204 NOTES ON LILIES 



say this also of all offsets and all seedling Lily bulbs), a continual growth 

 of this axis takes place, and from it are developed fresh scales and buds ;. 

 but that after flowering, the core degenerates more or less, and requires 

 renewal. I do not, therefore, agree with Dunedin (see pages 198 & 201) that 

 bulblets (even when seedlings) die year by year to be replaced by fresh 

 growth, but, I hold that the centre of life resides in the axis, and that 

 this developes scales and buds, growing year by year, till at length new 

 growth has been developed strong enough to throw up a flower stem ; at 

 the base of this flower stem, the axis originates a bud or buds, clothed 

 with scales, which, remaining connected with the axis, is developed into a 

 growth, destined to prove the flowering crown of the succeeding year, and 

 that this process is continued year by year, by the same root-stock, and, if 

 this be true of the squamose type, I think it will be more plainly seen, as 

 I have before hinted at, in the rhizomatous bulb of Superbum, and in the 

 oblique bulbs of Humboldtii and Wasliingtonianum. I am also pretty 

 certain that the old scales disappear at varying intervals in different Lilies^ 

 thus, in Giganteum, the old bulb scales are gone after flowering in the 

 autumn ; in Superbum and other rhizomatous kinds, they are to be seen 

 there in March, and probably, for some months later ; in Speciosum and 

 Auratum, I have seen old scales in October and November ; while, in the 

 Martayon group, I have seen scales that were, in my opinion, certainly 

 two years old. Therefore, I cannot accept, in all its entirety, as applicable 

 to all Lilies, Dunedin's statement of a yearly renewal of the whole Lily 

 bulb. 



24. I would rather again quote Mr. Baker's definition ; " Throughout 

 the tribe the bulbs are strictly determinate arid 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 (or at 

 the base of the flower stem). In a perennial squamose bulb the old scales 

 remain, and a new bulb is developed into a flower stem in their centre, 

 and all the 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. 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 above ground leaves of the floriferous stem, or produced in 

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

 the most favourable circumstances before it developes a flower bearing 

 stem. After that, if nothing untoward happens, 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 bulbs in their axils, more copiously 

 in some kinds, less copiously in others, from the circumference all round." 



25. In concluding this subject, I beg to add M. Max Leichtlin's opinion 

 as given in the Garden, vol. 13, p. '252, which seems to me to agree exactly 

 with what I have previously stated : 



" Lilies of various sorts form their bulbs very differently, therefore, no- 

 general theory can be applied to every species. As to Thompsonianum, now 



