4 6 Making a Bulb Garden 
away and the pots had been left undis- 
turbed and watered moderately, as any 
house plant would be, until the leaves at- 
tained their maximum growth, faded in 
their turn and died of themselves, it would 
be perfectly reasonable to expect flowers 
the next season out-of-doors; but it is 
invariably true that unless the foliage is 
left to die of itself and wither and dry 
down, the next season will be devoid of 
bloom. This dying leaf is the sign of 
work done, with bulbs the same as with 
trees and shrubs and every other kind of 
vegetation. 
The many scales or husks which lie one 
above the other or enwrap each other in 
true bulbs, are really the bases of old 
leaves. It is the thickening of these leaf 
bases with stored away food for next year 
that is going on while the leaves are green. 
But a corm, tuber or rhizome stores its 
next year’s supply in the thickened root 
or lower stem itself, rather than in the 
bases of its leaves: therefore these so- 
