The Story -Book of the Fields 



are covered with succulent, thick, tender, 

 fleshy scales, lit both to feed and protect 

 them, which make them quite plump. To- 

 wards the end of the summer they leave the 

 parent plant ; at the least wind they fall off 

 and are scattered on the ground, henceforth 

 left to their own resources. If the season is 

 damp many of them, while still situated in 

 the axil of the leaves, send out one or two 

 little roots, which hang in the air as if trying 

 to reach the ground. At the beginning of 

 October, all the shoots will have fallen, and 

 then the parent stalk dies. The wind and 

 the autumn rains soon cover them with dead 

 leaves and soil. Beneath this shelter they 

 are swollen through the winter by the juices 

 of their scales, and gradually plunge their 

 roots into the ground, so that in the spring 

 each one is displaying its first green leaf, in 

 order to continue its evolution and so become 

 a plant similar to the original lily. 



The shoots with fleshy scales, intended to 

 develop alone, independently of the parent 

 stalk, are called suckers. No agricultural 

 plant would provide us with so striking an 

 example of the migration of shoots as the 

 bulbiferous lily, but we have in our kitchen 

 gardens the garlic, which behaves in almost 



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