FULL-GROWN PLANT AND ITS PARTS 51 
scale leaves alone. These Chinese lily bulbs can be 
obtained from the florist and grown in the schoolroom 
or home. ; | 
Another kind of food reservoir for plants is the tuber. 
The most common and well-known tuber is the potato. 
It is a very much thickened stem. The “eyes” are 
buds on the stem. Do you 
know what develops from 
these “ eyes’ when the po- 
tato is planted in the warm 
sround? Place several tu- 
bers in cups of water so that 

one end will be out of the 
water, and set them in the Fi. 80, Tuber ef potate: 
window of a warm room. Place some in a dark cellar 
where they will not freeze in winter; leave them for 
about a year and see what will happen. | 
The potato is filled with starch grains. It 1s an 
underground stem. If you dig away the soil carefully 
from a “hill” of potatoes, you will see that there are 
underground stems more slender often than the erect 
ones, which have buds and scale leaves on them. On 
the end there is often a potato tuber. The starch 1s 
stored here for the good of the potato. New plants can 
be started from the tuber. They grow more rapidly and 
vigorously than from the seed of the potato. Man and 
other animals make use of the potato for food. 
