[Illustration: [Tunic]]
A tunic, as everybody knows, is a dress worn by the old Romans. The
Greeks wore a garment very much like that of the Romans, and it, too, is
often called a tunic.
Tunics did very well in a climate where it was always summer and upon
people who did not have to hurry about and work hard. But, graceful as
they are, and appropriate to Greece and Italy, they would hardly be
suitable for an American business costume in midwinter. For a tunic is
not very close fitting. It is a loose garment which would be apt to fly
away in our Northern gales.
The tunic was sometimes confined at the waist by a girdle and sometimes
let to hang loose.
We do not wear tunics, but we admire them very much in pictures, for
they show the beautiful lines of the human form instead of concealing
and altering them and making them ugly by ridiculous and tight-fitting
clothes—very often tight in the wrong place, as is the case with modern
garments.
But there _are_ tunics worn in America, and they are never tight in the
wrong place, though, truth to tell, they are not loose and flowing like
the Roman or Greek tunic.
Perhaps you do not know that so commonplace an object as an onion wears
a tunic, yet I assure you it is true. And the onion does not come from
Rome or Greece,—that is, probably not. As far as we can find out, that
homely vegetable first saw the light in the southwestern part of Asia,
but it was known in Rome and Greece at a very early date, and lived in
those places long before it found its way to us.
So it has seen more tunics than we have, if it is not a native Greek or
Roman. Not that its garments look at all like a classical tunic!
Probably its bulb is said to be “tunicated,” or covered with tunics,
because the different scales wrap about it like so many garments, and in
a general way the word “tunic” is used to mean any garment.
The hyacinth, too, has a tunicated bulb. It came from the Levant, a
country where people wear loose garments like the Greek and Roman tunic.
I do not think, however, the bulbs are called “tunicated” because they
came from the lands where tunics are worn. I think it is merely a name
the botanists gave them for convenience to tell that they were covered
by coats or scales.
What do you suppose a hyacinth tunic is, anyway? Merely a leaf scale!
That is, instead of growing into a leaf it remained a scale, and _some_
of the scales on a full-grown bulb are really the lower parts of the
leaves. The upper part has fallen off and left the fleshy base to feed
the plant.
Tulips have tunics too, and so have many other plants. And bulb tunics
are a _very_ convenient sort of garment to have, for they not only wrap
up the plant, but feed it!
They answer the same purpose that tubers do on potato roots. You know
what tubers are? They are just swollen portions of underground stems.
When you eat your next potato remember it is a tuber, and that a tuber
is merely a short piece of stem _very_ much thickened. If you cannot
believe this, look a potato in the eyes. There you will see the truth,
for the eyes are merely the joints of the stem, and at each is a little
bud that in the spring will start to grow, just like the buds on the
branches of a tree. The bud grows at the expense of the material in the
tuber, and the hyacinth grows at the expense of the food stored in the
bulb. Of course, after a while green leaves form and make more food, but
the very first food comes from the thick underground scales.
[Illustration: [Hyacinth]]
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.
[Illustration: [Hyacinth Bulb]]