Bulbs - Hardcover

Bryan, John E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0881925292 ISBN 13: 9780881925296

Publisher: Timber Pr, 2002

Synopsis

John Bryan's substantive revision to his original magnum opus published in 1989 — selected by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 75 great American gardening books— provides expanded coverage of some 230 genera and a staggering number of species, varieties, and cultivars. Genera are treated with detail appropriate to their importance, with information on history, classification, culture, propagation, pests and diseases, uses, and species and cultivars. Detailed encyclopedic plant listings are complemented by an equally comprehensive pictorial presentation. Not only are there more than 1100 color photographs — many showing the plants in their natural habitats — but there are also 43 color reproductions of botanical illustrations from 19th-century issues of Curtis's Botanical Magazine and other publications, taken from the author's extensive collection.

About this title

About the Author

John E. Bryan is a horticultural consultant, lecturer, and television personality. He publishes a widely read monthly gardening newsletter. Trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, and the Royal Horticultural Society s garden at Wisley, he has served as vice-president of Oregon Bulb Farms and director of the Strybing Arboretum in California. He currently gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Mention the word bulb to most people and a whole range of plants comes to mind, including dahlias, gladiolus, irises, lilies, tulips, crocuses, and many others commonly known by this term. But are they "true" bulbs? And just what is a true bulb?

A true bulb is composed of leaves modified for storage and attached to a basal plate that can be considered a squashed stem. Crocuses are regarded as bulbs; in fact, they are not true bulbs but corms. Here, the base of the stem is used to store food, as is also the case with the gladiolus, which is regarded (in the broad sense) as a bulb. In the genus Iris can be found true bulbs, as well as rhizomes, but a rhizome is actually a creeping stem swollen to enable foods to be stored. Many begonias are considered tuberous, the tuber being an underground branch modified for storage and capable of producing buds and roots. These are not true bulbs but, to the world at large, bulbs, corms, rhizomes, and tubers all fall under the umbrella term bulb.

The diversity of color, flower form, size, habitat, and desirable growing conditions of bulbous plants rivals all other forms of vegetation. The flowers of certain Crocus species just manage to peep above the ground, while the towering shoots of Dahlia imperialis often will reach more than 16 feet in one season of growth.

Bulbs are found all over the world. Nomocharis is found above 12,000 feet in southwestern Sichuan Province, China; Hyacinthoides non-scripta (English bluebell) in the wooded areas and glades of Great Britain; Watsonia at the southern tip of Africa. Camassia quamash is at home in the wet meadows of the Pacific Northwest. The principal areas of the world, however, that are the common natural habitats of a high percentage of these plants are the Mediterranean; South Africa; Western Asia, especially Turkey and Iran; Central Asia and Afghanistan; the area around the Black Sea and the Caucasus; and the Pacific coasts of North and South America. Fewer bulbous genera are indigenous to Japan, tropical and North Africa, Great Britain, and eastern North America.

Edition details

• Publisher: Timber Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0881925292
• ISBN 13: 9780881925296
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 524