bulb

bulb

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 corm of the crocus and the gladiolus, the tuber of the dahlia and the potato, and the rhizome 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).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia™ Copyright © 2022, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

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

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

bulb

[bəlb]

(botany)

A short, subterranean stem with many overlapping fleshy leaf bases or scales, such as in the onion and tulip.

(electricity)

envelope

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

bulb

In lighting, see lamp bulb, light bulb.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

bulb

1. a rounded organ of vegetative reproduction in plants such as the tulip and onion: a flattened stem bearing a central shoot surrounded by fleshy nutritive inner leaves and thin brown outer leaves

2. a plant, such as a hyacinth or daffodil, that grows from a bulb

3. See light bulb

4. a rounded part of an instrument such as a syringe or thermometer

5. Anatomy a rounded expansion of a cylindrical organ or part, such as the medulla oblongata

6. Nautical a bulbous protuberance at the forefoot of a ship to reduce turbulence

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005