The Book of Bulbs

HANDBOOKS OF PRACTICAL GARDENING—V
EDITED BY HARRY ROBERTS
THE BOOK OF BULBS
EARLY TULIPS
S. ARNOTT, F.R.H.S.
TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ON THE BOTANY OF BULBS BY THE EDITOR
JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON AND NEW YORK. MCMI
Printed by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.
Like many another distinguished gardener, Mr Arnott is a Scotsman, being a native of Dumfries, and now living in the adjoining county of Kirkcudbright. For the last fourteen years his name has been a familiar one to readers of the leading journals devoted to gardening, for he has been a very frequent contributor to The Gardener's Chronicle , The Gardener's Magazine , The Garden , The Journal of Horticulture , and other papers. Although not a professional gardener, Mr Arnott is a practical one, for he manages at least the flower department of his beautiful garden almost without assistance; and having spent most of his life amongst flowers—his mother being a great gardener—he is a successful plant grower, as well as an interested one.
Mr Arnott takes an active part in the work of encouraging the gardening spirit among his countrymen, and is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, as well as a member of other leading associations with similar aims.
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.