bulb
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bulb,
thickened, fleshy plant bud, usually formed under the surface of the soil, which carries the plant over from one blooming season to another. It may have many fleshy layers (as in the onion and hyacinth) or thin dry scales (as in some lilies)—both of which are highly modified leaves. Many popular outdoor and house plants, such as the tulip and the narcissus, are grown from bulbs, often out of their usual flowering season by forcing (i.e., by exposing them to a cold treatment). Not true bulbs, but often so called, are the cormcorm,short, thickened underground stem, usually covered with papery leaves. A corm grows vertically, producing buds at the upper nodes and roots from the lower surface. Corms serve as organs of food storage and in some plants (e.g.
..... Click the link for more information. of the crocus and the gladiolus, the tubertuber,
enlarged tip of a rhizome (underground stem) that stores food. Although much modified in structure, the tuber contains all the usual stem parts—bark, wood, pith, nodes, and internodes.
..... Click the link for more information. of the dahlia and the potato, and the rhizomerhizome
or rootstock,
fleshy, creeping underground stem by means of which certain plants propagate themselves. Buds that form at the joints produce new shoots.
..... Click the link for more information. of certain irises. All such organs are specialized subterranean stems serving for food and water storage and asexual reproduction.
Bibliography
See J. E. Bryan, Bulbs (1989).
Bulb
a modified, usually subterranean shoot with a greatly shortened stem and fleshy scalelike leaves.
Bulbs store water and nutritive substances (primarily sugars); they are also a means of vegetative renewal and reproduction. In some plant species, bulblets develop in the inflorescences (onions and meadow grasses) or in the leaf axils of aboveground shoots (lilies and toothworts). Bulbs can function as storage organs for approximately one year (annual bulbs of tulips, onions, and fritillary) or longer (perennial bulbs of narcissus, snowdrop, and hyacinth). After their nutrients have been used, dry scales form protective outer coverings. Scaly bulbs have narrow scales that touch the bulb only at their bases (lilies); tunicated bulbs have broad enwrapping scales (onions).
According to the manner of growth, two types of bulbs are distinguished. Monopodial, or intermediate, bulbs renew themselves at the expense of the terminal bud of the bulb stem (snow-drop, narcissus, and belladonna lily). In plants with sympodial, or determinate, bulbs, the inflorescence and aboveground parts develop from the terminal bud, but the bulb regenerates at the expense of the bud located in the axil of a scale (tulips, onions, and hyacinths). In sympodial bulbs the mother bulb is replaced annually by daughter bulbs. If not one but two or more buds are active, the bulb reproduces vegetatively. In garlic plants several cloves form in the axils of the bulb scales and are arranged in a row, thus constituting complex bulbs.
N. I. SHORINA