MONOCOTYLEDONEJE. 57 



Fig. 25. 



In cultivation, we often see tubers, as well as 

 bulbs, deviate from their natural manner of reproduc- 

 tion. The Crocus for instance, instead of producing 

 its new tuber on the crown of the old one, will some- 

 times, the Italian species particularly, send down a 

 long shapeless rhizoma, having a new tuber on its 

 apex, totally diiferent from the common structure. 

 Like bulbs too, if prevented from developing their 

 stems in the air, they will throw out underground 

 stems or runners, and produce new tubers plentifully 

 without any assistance from either stem or leaves, as 

 Solatium tuberosum*. 



* This property of the potato deserves further notice ; when an 

 early crop is taken up from a hot-bed, some few of the tubers are 

 left behind. These, instead of putting up stems in the air, exsert 

 them in the ground, producing new tubers at short distances from 

 each other on the runners, and which they continue to do for 

 months together. In the fields we sometimes see, that after a dry 

 summer, when the growth of both tops and tubers has been 

 checked, and wet weather sets in before the crop is taken up, a 

 numerous second crop will be produced not from the original 

 stems, but from the first formed tubers. 



