LILIACEAE (LILY FAMILY) 



81 



such as are used at elevators for the drying of commercial grains. 



It was demonstrated that the specific gravity of the wheat grains 



was increased by the process and that of the bulbiets decreased, 



enabling the crop to be cleaned and made marketable without 



loss of time. Flour is spoiled when even a small 



number of Garlic "kernels" are ground with the 



wheat. Not only so, but a moist, sticky coating is 



formed on the rollers that crush the grains, com- 



pelling stoppage of the mill so that the machinery 



may be cleaned. In mills that make stone-ground 



flour the damage is still greater, for there it is 



found that the taint can be entirely removed only 



by redressing the buhrs tones. (Fig. 43.) 



The plants are one to three feet tall, springing 

 from small, ovoid, membranous-coated bulbs. 

 Leaves slim, deep green, hollow, round in cross sec- 

 tion, borne below the middle of the slender flower- 

 ing stalk, which bears at its top an erect, dense 

 cluster or umbel of small, pinkish purple flowers, 

 sometimes nearly white, each flower having six 

 pointed perianth segments with a stamen inserted 

 at base; pedicels threadlike, often nearly an inch 

 long. Below the flower-head are two papery, 

 pointed bracts which soon fall away. As the 

 flowers wither, their places are taken by aerial 

 bulbiets, each about the size of a wheat kernel 

 and tipped with a "whisker," or "filament, nearly 

 an inch long. There may be twenty -five or thirty 

 to a hundred bulbiets in a seed-head. Lest it 



should not be enough, the plant works below 



, i i 11 11 i a i 



ground too; secondary bulbs, called cloves or 



" toes," develop at the base of the old bulb, and 

 in the fall form thick tufts of young plants which remain green all 

 winter, ready to repeat the cycle of growth in the spring. New 

 infestations are usually effected by transportation of the bulbiets, 

 and the purchase of strawberry plants from infested localities has 

 been known to start a new "station " by means of the tiny under- 

 ground bulbs or " cloves." 



FIG. 43. 



F *f, ld Gar . llc 

 (Allium mne- 



