So, thank you for all the replies! In my first year of university (2002) the same questions have arose in me. For bulb I consider a plant which has at least one scale which is for water and nutrient storage, and this scale surrounds the bud. Examples: Allium rosenbachianum, A. giganteum, A. sativum, A. ursinum. All of them has only one scale. (I have pictures somewhere... in the mass of 100 000+ pictures.) All of these scales are ment to survive one cycle. At the end the new vegetative bud will grow another scale with at least one other vegetative bud. Bulbs with many scales, but only for one cycle: The have more than one scale, and there is one secondary bud at the bottom of each scale, plus a big vegetative bud. The bud will make the new fleshy scales while the plant is growing with a new bud, which will grow in the next cycle. The rest of the scales will shrivel and decompose or make the tunic. E.g.:Rest of Allium species, Tulips, Iris × hollandica, Fritillaria, Leucocoryne, etc. This means you have a new bulb every year. In this regards Fritillaria is more close to Tulipa then to Lilium. And for Fritillaria I have a picture taken this year to rove it, but still i have to find it :/ Bulbs with many scales and the scales exists more than one year: The outer scales shrivel, decompose or make the tunic, the inner scales get further from the central bud each year. The most demonstrative examples are the Amaryllidaceae e.g. Hippeastrum, Galanthus, Narcissus and Hyacinthus. Now for young Hyacinthus and Lilium bulbs if the growing season is optimal the whole bulb can be renewd, mostly because the inner bulb grows so big thath the outer scales can't keep up with the growing, and instead of expanding they split open and transport their stored food to the newly forming scales. But under normal conditions a mature bulb keeps the scales for 2 or more years. If you cut a bulb vertically and lucky enough you can see the old stems of former years. Better yet, start peeling a Lilium bulb (from the Asiatic, Trumpet or Oriental group) and after a few layers you can see the old stem of the bulb. Of course not all bulbs can be put into these groups, there are special ones, like Lilium pardalinum, which grows a new bulb each year, and still the old scales can be seen as Jim said with L. superbum. Here you can see a cut bulb of hyacinthus, the captions are in Hungarian :/ https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JmHAvdBGTcM/… and you can see some pictures of various storage organs in my classification http://docstoc.com/docs/150793749/… Regards, Janos Z5a, Hungary _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/
