pardalinum said:What I would like to know is how is the bulblet made with nothing but a skinny leaf to live off of for a month? I mean, scale bulblets feed off the nice plump scale...
Hypogeal geriminating lilies and other plants produce tiny bulbs or other structures from what is stored in the seed. While it is true that seeds are totally jam-packed with necessary building blocks, it wouldn't be far fetched that a leaf blade (at least 100-1000 times more bulk) would possess the needed "stuff", too.
Of course these bulblets are very tiny in relation to scale bulb standards.
I really don't know what the rooting hormone is for. Bulbs and bulblets are botanically considered modified leaves. Of course at some point roots will need to grow but I think the bulblet would come first. But what do I know!!
Actually, a bulb
scale is a modified leaf. I suspect the the basal plate (a modified stem), however miniscule, is differentiated in the new bulblet prior to the formation of any scales. A bulb is modified leaves, stem and roots, altogether.
Enough with the nit-picking.
Of course, something has to trigger the change to produce different kinds of cells, even if were just regular leaf cells to modified leaf cells (scales). Not only that, there are many, many types of leaf cells within a leaf. Which might you think would not need any coaxing to change shape?
