LUTHER BURBANK 



increased in size, the tiger plant may come to be 

 valued for its edible bulb quite as highly as for its 

 beautiful and spectacular flower. 



MULTIPLICATION BY BULB DIVISION 



The habit of storing nutritious matter in its 

 bulb, and the further habit of producing collateral 

 bulbs from which new stalks will grow, so that the 

 plant multiplies indefinitely in this way, is charac- 

 teristic, as everyone knows, of a large number of 

 plant families, many of which have come within 

 the scope of our studies. 



The phenomenon of bulb division, indeed, is so 

 familiar to everyone who has experimented in the 

 vegetable or flower garden as to take its place 

 among those familiar matters of fact that call for 

 no comment. 



Yet if we consider the matter thoughtfully it 

 will be clear that this habit of putting forth offsets 

 from a bulb as the basis for the development of 

 new plants is an altogether extraordinary phenom- 

 enon quite as mysterious, indeed, as the produc- 

 tion of the seeds that bear the complex hereditary 

 factors and transmit the qualities of a race of 

 plants from one generation to another. 



There is, in point of fact, no fundamental dif- 

 ference between the production of new plants by 

 bulb division and their production by seed, except 

 that in the latter case there is opportunity for the 



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