The hyacinth belongs to the royal Lily Family, and is a very great favorite with people all over the world. Sometimes its flowers are single and sometimes double, and they always give forth a delightful fragrance. Its home, as we know, is in the Levant, a country made up of the islands and the coast along the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, particularly of Asia Minor and Syria.
It grows so readily and comes up so early in the spring and is so lovely it is no wonder people everywhere cherish it. Its bulb is large and fleshy, and, as we know, is made up of thick scales. These scales are full of starch and other food materials to feed the young plant.
For the young plant is in the very center of the bulb, with the fleshy scales folded about it very much as the scales are folded about a tree bud. In fact, a bulb is very much like a bud. The bottom of the bulb is a very short, broad stem. The scales grow on this stem as the leaves do on a branch. They are alternate in arrangement, but packed so closely together you have to look very carefully in order to discover that they are arranged like leaves on a stem. After all, as we know, these scales are only modified leaves. The bracts of the pelargonium are leaves modified to protect the young buds, and the scales of the hyacinth are leaves modified to protect and feed the plant within.
For what do you think? At the very center of the hyacinth bulb is a tiny flower cluster wrapped about by half a dozen tiny leaves! These are white and delicate and very, very small. But in the spring they grow and come out of the bulb in the form of green leaves and bright flowers.
THE BEE.
I am a rollicking bumblebee.
I sail through the air as it pleases me.