1874. ] 
DEVELOPMENT OP LILY-BULBS. 
269 
loped in one season, it is best to throw away the old plants at the end of the 
season, and grow on young ones. 
The plant being a native of the hot and moist river-banks near the Equator, 
does best in a hot-house, with a little bottom-heat, and requires a large quantity 
of water during the growing season, and also to be shaded from the direct rays of 
the sun. The soil which will grow a good Gloxinia will suit this plant. I use about 
one-third loam, one-third peat, and a third rotten manure, with enough sharp 
sand to keep the soil open, and generally give the plant two or three shifts from 
the cutting-pot. A 7-in. pot, with frequent watering, and an occasional watering 
with manure-water, will grow this plant to its full size, but by giving it a shift 
into a 9-in. pot, it will be grown a better colour, with less trouble. In the 
autumn the plant is liable to decay at the surface of the pot, if kept too wet over¬ 
head, in a low temperature. Like most other foliage plants, it is subject to bug, 
but is easily cleaned.— James Taplin, South Amhoij^ New Jersey^ U.S.A. 
DEVELOPMENT OF LILY-BULBS. 
f T is a fact familiar to growers of Lilies, though scarcely known to cultivators 
generally, that there are different types of bulb amongst the various species 
f of Lilium^ while the Lilies themselves differ in respect to bulb-development 
from some of their nearest allies. It may be useful to make this fact more 
widely known, and in order to do so, we avail ourselves of some remarks on the sub¬ 
ject by Mr. J. G. Baker, in a memoir on the Tulipese, published not long since in 
the Journal of the Linnean Society. In this most useful memoir, which deals with 
the nomenclature of so many of our garden favourites, including Lilium^ Tulipa^ 
and Fritillaria., Mr. Baker observes :— 
“ All the plants of the tribe are able, in a state of nature or under cultivation, 
to hold their ground, and increase more or less, by means of bulb-reproduction, 
independent of being multiplied by means of seeds. 
“ The squamose perennial bulb, as exemplified in all the Old-World species of 
Lilium^ consists, in its mature form, of a large number of thin flat lanceolate or 
oblong-lanceolate scales tightly pressed against one another face to back, and 
spirally arranged round a central axis which is not produced either vertically or 
horizontally. From the under-side of the central axis proceeds downwards a 
dense tuft of fleshy fibres, and from the upper-side is produced the flower-stem 
of the year, its lower part, between the summit of the bulb and the surface 
of the soil, giving off copious radicular fibres, which assist greatly in 
procuring the nourishment and strengthening the hold upon the ground 
of the developed flower-bearing stem. This underground root-bearing 
portion of the stem above the bulb is often vertical, but in some species, 
as, for instance, Lilium Leichtlinii^ will creep for the length of half a foot, so 
that, if grown in a pot and the bulb planted in its centre, the stem will spring 
up from the side of the pot. All these numerous flattened scales of the bulb 
possess potentially the power of developing new bulbs in their axils, and will do 
this, in some species, at any rate, under cultivation, if a bulb be broken up and 
properly treated; so that what with bulb-reproduction and seed-reproduc¬ 
tion, a skilful operator may in three or four years multiply fifty-fold his 
stock of a desirable species or variety. But in a state of nature there is 
