Huntsville gazette., 1882-05-20
Hyacinth Bulbs.

If you cut open hyacinth bulb or,
what is simpler to experiment upon, an
onion, you will find that it consists OF
several thick abortive leaves or thick,
fieshy scales. In these subterranean
leaves the plant stores up the food stuffs
elaborated by its green portions during
the summer, and there they lie the whole
winter through, ready to send up How
ering stem early in the succeeding
spring. The material in the old bulb Is
used in thus producing leaves or BIOS
SONS at the beginning of the second or
third season, but fresh bulbs grow out
anew from its side, and in these the
plant stores up fresh material for the
succeeding years growth.
& The hyacinths which we keep in
glasses on our mantel-pieces represent
such a reserve of three or four years
accumulation. They have purposely
been prevented from Towering in order
to make them produce finer trusses of
bloom when they are at length permitted
to follow their own free will. Thus the
bulb contains material enough to send
up leaves and blossoms from its own re-
sources, and it will do SO even if grown
entirely in the dark. In that case the
leaves will be pale yellow or family
greenish, because the true green pig
ment, which is the active agent of diges-
ton, can only be produced under the
influence of light; whereas, the flowers
will retain their proper color, because
their pigment is always due to oxidation
alone, and is but little dependent upon
the rays of sunshine. Even if grown in
an ordinary room, away from the win
dow, the leaves seldom assume their
proper deep tone of full green; they are
mainly dependent on the food-stuffs laid
by in the bulb, and do but little active
work on their own account. After the
hyacinth has lowered, the bulb is re-
duced to an empty and fiaccid mass of
watery brown scales.
Among all the lily kind such devices
for storing up useful material, either in
bulbs or in the very similar organs
known as corms, are extremely common.
As a consequence, many of them pro-
duce unusually large and snowy flowers.
Even among our native English lilies we
can boast of such beautiful blossoms as
the fritillary, the wild hyacinth, the
meadow saffron and the two pretty
squills; while in our garden the tiger
lilies, tulips, tuberOses and many others
belong to the same handsome dubious
group. Closely allied families give us
the bulb-bearing narcissus, daffodil,
snow-drop, amaryllis and Guernsey
lily; the crocus, gladiolus, iris and corn
flag; while the neighboring tribe of
orchids, most of which have tubers, prob
ably produce more ornamental flowers
than any other family of plants in the
whole world.
Among a widely different group we
get other herbs which lay by rich stores
of starch or similar nutritious substances
in thickened underground branches,
known as tubers; such, for example, are
the potato and the Jerusalem artichoke.
Sometimes the root itself is the store
house for the accumulation of food stuffs,
as in the dahlia, the carrot, the radish
and the turnip. In all these cases the
plant obviously derives benefit from the
habit which it has acquired Of hiding
away its reserve fund beneath the
ground, where it is much less likely to
be discovered and eaten by its animal
foes, for it is obvious that these special
reservoirs of energetic material, which
the plant intends as food for its own
flower or for its future offspring, are
exactly those parts which animals will
be likely unfairly to appropriate to their
personal use. What feeds plant will
feed squirrel, a mouse, pig or man
just as well. Each requires just the
same free elements, whose mbination
with oxygen may yield it heat and move
ment.
Thus it happens that the parts of
plants which we human beings mainly
use as food stuffs are Just the organs
where starch has been laid by for the
plants own domestic economy-seeds.
rs in the pea, bean, wheat, maize, bar
ley, rice or millet; tubers, as in the
potato and Jerusalem artichoke; corns,
as in the yam or tare; and roots, as in
arrow-root, turnip, parsnip and carrot.
In all these, and in many other cases,
the habit first set up by Nature has been
sedulously encouraged and increased by
mans deliberate selection. What man
thus consciously effects in a few genera
.tions, the survival of the fittest has un-
consciously effected through many long
previous ages of native development.-
KnOa0ledge.