Chapter II.—Bulbs
It has already been shown what sort of appearance the outer tunics present, and it has been explained how the tunics in general are formed. We are now going to push our examination further. After divesting the bulb of seven or eight tunics (or fans), one comes (A) upon a little thin flattened thread of crimson colour, like a line. It is, as it were, embedded in one of the tunics; it starts from the base of the bulb and rises to the extreme top.
Continuing to take away again the same number of tunics, one comes upon a second thread (B) like the first, A, only that it is less red and thicker; then, for the third time, taking off another seven or eight tunics, one meets with a third line or fillet (C), very like the two first, with this difference, it is quite white and much thicker. Under the last fillet are the new leaves (or fans), beginning to bud, about seven or eight in number, and in the centre of them is the stem, which is going to flower in a few months.
Now all the tunics are supposed to be taken off, and only the three fillets or threads which we spoke of are left (A, B, C). Fillet A is all that is left (within the bulb) of the stem which flowered eighteen months ago.
Fillet C is the remains of the stem of the last flower borne by the bulb, six months before.
Fillet D is the stem which is about to flower in six months’ time (the flower buds are already sufficiently formed to be seen), and E contains the stem and tunic leaves, which are to come into bud in another eighteen months.
If, when the bulb is in full flower, you divest it of all its tunics, till you come to the flower stem,—you will find at the base of it a very tiny bud; if you take away the stem, which easily breaks off, you will find the bud remains firmly attached to the base of the bulb. If you open the bud with a penknife, you will see it is composed of six or seven little leaves (or fans), and inside a tiny stem, furnished with buds, which has begun to grow already, and from the moment the bulb is laid on the shelves it increases till the time comes for putting it again in the earth. We have been speaking all this time of the double hyacinth. The single hyacinth is somewhat differently constructed, for it usually throws out several shoots from the sides as well as from the centre. The single bulb does not appear to last so long, for its fillets are fewer, but the number of flowering stems it produces, and the irregularity of their growth, makes it difficult to follow it in its various stages of development as exactly as one can the double. By dint of observing, year after year, bulbs, both those in a good state of preservation and some partially decomposed, it has been discovered that the bulb always loses the same number of outer tunics as it gains interiorly new ones. When once a bulb has acquired the regulation number of tunics, it will always keep to the same number year by year, and nevertheless every year it is putting forth seven or eight from its centre. The outer tunics, which we call “red skin,” regularly shrivel and decay in the earth, and thus they disappear.
The central (fans) or young tunics, when they turn into leaves, do the work of an air-pump; they are the lungs by which the plant lives; they dilate in heat and contract in cold. When dilated they take in the air, with all with which it is impregnated, and they give it out again with the regularity that an animal breathes through its lungs.
Plants do not like the shade of trees; they need open air and sunshine, and they like places where they catch the dew and rain and mist; the moisture thus obtained through their leaves is better for them than water poured upon them from a watering-pot.
Planted in hot-houses or under glass they do without much water, because the hot air produces vapour by the sun’s rays from above or from the fire beneath, and it is necessary to introduce a little air in order to let it evaporate (but the plants must not be chilled by cold seizing them in the process). Hyacinths which are protected by planks sometimes do better than those under glass.
The planks are lifted and the plants find themselves exposed to the open air, this is only done when the air is not likely to injure them. To be kept constantly under glass or in a room sometimes affects their colour and shape. It also spoils their colour to be exposed to heavy rain or a very hot sun, which exhausts them. The leaves (as the leaves of a tree) turn on their pedicels one side to the earth, for one surface of the leaf sucks in moisture and the other gives it out. What they receive through the upper surface by day they give out through their under surface at night by a process of evaporation.
When the bulbs are planted the leaves (or fans) are already pushing forth a green shoot. The gardener does not feel particularly uneasy if the frost touches the tip of the shoot, but they are very much afraid of (the frost) its reaching the flower-buds within the shoot, for if their tops are nipped by the frost, the hyacinths will be disfigured. If any one or two of the leaf sheaths get yellow or diseased they can be cut away without injuring the bud, and neither will the bulb itself suffer, as in any case the leaves drop off in the end of the year.
It is evident now that Nature works in the bulb from the interior to the exterior, and this principle must be well borne in mind by the cultivator.