The Book of Bulbs

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Arnott Samuel. The Book of Bulbs

EDITOR'S NOTE

CONCERNING BULBS BY THE EDITOR

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER III. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER IV. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER V. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER VI. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER VII. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER VIII. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER IX. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER X. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER XI. HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER XII. HALF-HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER XIII. HALF-HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER XIV. HALF-HARDY BULBS

CHAPTER XV. GREENHOUSE AND STOVE BULBS

CHAPTER XVI. GREENHOUSE AND STOVE BULBS

CHAPTER XVII. GREENHOUSE AND STOVE BULBS

CHAPTER XVIII. GREENHOUSE AND STOVE BULBS

Отрывок из книги

Anyone who has observed ever so casually the order of flowering of the plants in garden or hedgerow, must have noticed that bulbous plants figure prominently amongst those which flower in the early months of the year. Winter Aconite, Snowdrop, Crocus, Scilla, Chionodoxa, Daffodil, Fritillary, Anemone, and Tulip are among the greatest treasures of the spring garden, and though these are not all strictly bulbous plants, they all have either bulbous, tuberous, or other enlarged form of root or underground stem which serves a like purpose. Even those early flowers, the primroses, are borne on plants whose thick, fleshy, underground parts are almost tuberous in appearance; and it will be found that all the earliest blooming plants of spring are furnished with large stores of nutriment in root or stem. Only by virtue of these granaries of materialised solar energy, accumulated during the spring and summer of the previous year, are plants able to manufacture leaves and beautiful flowers in those early months during which the sun yields little heat and light, so essential to healthy plant life.

In a sense, we may consider bulbs and tubers as functionally equivalent to seeds, for they contain within sundry wrappings a dormant plant and stores of food material, wherewith the young plant may be nourished from the time when growth commences until the plant can fend for itself.

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The Amaryllis order contains the Daffodil and the Snowdrop, as well as Leucojum æstivum, which is thought by some to be a native species. It is, however, the order of the Liliaceæ to which belong the majority of English bulbous flowering plants. Bluebells, like "heavens upbreaking through the earth," purple Fritillaries, yellow Tulips, Stars of Bethlehem with curious greenish flowers, Vernal Scillas, the not-so-pretty S. autumnalis, and the Broad-leaved Garlic, whose white flowers are among the most beautiful of all, though the scent of the whole plant is very "grosse and very unpleasant for fayre ladies and tender lily rose colloured damsels which often time profereth sweet breathes before gentle wordes." There are a few other British bulbous and cormous plants scattered among the various orders, such as the Meadow-saffron which is still used in pharmacy, but the greater number are contained in the three orders named.

A. caroliniana, a North American Anemone, now referred to heterophylla, grows about nine inches high, and has finely cut leaves and white or purplish flowers in May. It likes a shady place and peaty soil.

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