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 bulblets 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 rédressing the buhrstones. (Fig. 43.) 
The plants are one to three feet tall, springing 
from small, ovoid, membranous-coated bulbs. 
Leaves slim, deep green, hollow, rownd 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 aérial 
bulblets, 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 bulblets in a seed-head. Lest it 
should not be enough, the plant works below 
ground too; secondary bulbs, called “cloves” or 
“toes,” develop at the base of the old bulb, and 
Fie. 43. — 
Field Garlic 
(Allium  vine- 
ale). X4. 
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 bulblets, 
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.” 
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