XXV 
A LILY THAT WE EAT 
I SN’T IT ODD that the onion, when one examines its 
family tree, is found to be a lily! 
What is even more shocking is the fact that the odorous 
garlic, so dear to people of the Mediterranean, likewise 
turns out to be a member of this aristocratic plant family. 
The botanist can tell whether or not a plant is a lily by 
examining its roots. Most members of the lily group are 
herbs that die when the frost comes in autumn. But they 
have worked out a scheme for storing up plant food in a 
bulb and leaving it in the ground to start the young lily 
in the spring. The yellow trout lily by the brookside, for 
example, can draw on this food supply and get started by 
the time the snow melts. It can get sunshine even in the 
woods before the leaves come out on the trees, and make 
its early bloom and seed. 
The lily bulb is built up layer by layer as is the onion. 
Bulbs that one buys at the florist’s and plants for spring 
flowers, such as hyacinths and tulips, are members of the 
lily family. 
These plants have narrow, sheathlike leaves that are 
plainly of the same kind. All have six-petaled flowers 
that are trumpet or bell-shaped. All have the same sort 
of stems. It is easy to tell a member of the lily family 
once one begins to think of these traits of the tribe. 
The onion grows from a true lily bulb. It has a lily 
stalk, lily leaves, and its flower is clearly a lily. The 
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