Bulbs. And other confusing things.
Tulips are probably the most familiar bulb plant. We’ve all got a pretty good understanding that you can put this little plant ball in the ground and green things will sprout out of it year after year. For a more specific understanding, a bulb is actually a short stem that functions as a energy storage unit while the plant is dormant. It’s made up of fleshy leaf scales that contain food reserves that allow the plant to live through stressful climatic conditions. The very center of the bulb houses the vegetative growing point, or the undeveloped stem of the plant, while roots grow from the underside of the bulb.
There are other types of storage organs that are often referred to as bulbs, but they aren’t really bulbs. Rhizomes, tubers, and corms, for example, are not bulbs. They do function as underground energy storage, but they are structurally different. Some plants, like epiphytic orchids, or orchids that grow on other plants, have pseudoblubs. These are not true bulbs but they do look like them. Pseudobulbs are above ground storage organs that develop as a result of the thickening of the plant’s stem between leaf nodes.
Botanical terminology can be tricky like that sometimes.
Source
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 May 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulb?oldformat=true>.
