Introduction to Planting Flower Bulbs

YOLANDA VANVEEN: Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen on behalf of Expert Village. Today, we're going to talk about the definition of a flower bulb. A flower bulb is any plant that goes dormant for a part of the year. It could be dormant in the winter when it's cold or it could be dormant in the summer when it's really, really hot and dry and they just dry out because there's no water. So, any plant that has a dormant period is considered a bulb and there's a lot of different types of bulbs that come from different parts of the world that are considered bulbs just because they are dormant for even one or two weeks or a month or three months of the year. And some bulbs--plants are bulbs in certain areas and not in others. For example, Agapanthus or Lily of the Nile is not a bulb in California. It grows green year round and has foliage and blooms usually in early spring, mid-spring and then sporadically sometimes in the winter whereas in the Pacific Northwest, most years, it's considered a bulb because it'll actually die back. The greenery will completely die and you won't see anything in the winter and then in the spring, it'll just come back again. It's very hearty. It's from the mountains of South Africa so there's no reason it can't survive in a little bit of cold temperatures. So, plants can be bulbs in some areas and not in others. So, next we're going to talk about the different types of bulbs and the difference between true bulbs, rhizomes, corms, and runners.