Producing New Plants from Bulbs

With fall fast approaching, many gardeners are planning their fall and spring gardens. Many of the popular perennials grown during this time of year are bulbous plants. Bulbous plants have thickened underground storage organs commonly called bulbs. Not all bulbous plants produce true bulbs, other specialized underground storage organs include corms, tubers, tuberous roots and rhizomes. These enlarged storage organs are very often used in producing new plants.

True bulbs (Amaryllis, Crinum, Narcissus) develop miniature bulbs, known as bulblets, which when grown to full size are known as offsets. Offsets can be separated from the mother bulb and replanted into beds. The number of growing seasons required for the offsets to reach flowering size will depend upon the kind of bulb and size of the offset. Some bulbs such as amaryllis, blood lily, hurricane lily and spider lily can be cut into several vertical sections and each section planted upright in a mixture of equal volumes of sand and peat. Bulblets will develop from the basal plate between the bulb scales. These can then be transplanted into beds to continue development.

Corms such as gladiolus and watsonia produce new corms on top of the old corms, which wither. Miniature corms called cormels are produced between the old and new corms. These can be separated from the mother corms and stored along with the new corms over winter for planting in the spring. New corms usually produce flowers the first season, but cormels require 2 or 3 years of growth to reach flowering size.

Tubers (Caladium, gloriosa), tuberous roots (dahlia, ranunculus) and rhizomes (Canna, daylily) are propagated by cutting them into sections, each containing at least one bud. Special care should be taken when dividing dahlia tuberous roots to ensure that each tuberous root has a piece of crown bearing a healthy bud. Tuberous roots that are broken off without a bud are worthless.

Many bulbous plants produce seeds that will germinate and grow into flowering plants. This method of propagation is not very popular because many varieties today are hybrids, so flower color and type may be highly variable and results can't be predicted.


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