XVI 



BULBS 



BULBS are one of the wonderful adaptations to 

 adverse conditions — to conditions which would 

 kill vegetation completely if vegetation did not 

 adjust itself to meet them — which are constantly to be 

 met in Nature. They are really a plant reduced to the 

 minimum — to the most consolidated form possible — to 

 the sphere, or to an approach to the sphere. This is 

 the form exposing the least possible surface ; and that 

 surface, in a bulb, is usually well protected. 



Botanically there is a great difference in bulbs, and 

 these differences — most of them — are perfectly apparent 

 even to the layman. For example, there is the potato 

 and the onion: both are bulbs in the generally accepted 

 sense of the term, yet one is a solid body and the other 

 is made up of scales which wrap around each other. 

 Strictly speaking however, only the latter form is a true 

 bulb; the other forms are known as rhizomes, tubers 

 or corms, according as they are creeping roots tocks, 

 thickened, succulent bodies, or solid, like the ''root" of 

 a crocus. 



There is no class of plants which will produce such 

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