I was very confused when I tried looking this up. Apparently daffodil/tulip bulbs can divide underground, so you can split the bulbs and plant them for more flowers. However, the flower blooms will also produce seeds…except it sounds like they’re unnecessary if the bulbs functionally act as seeds? Also, my impression is that a single flower bulb can go through several years of growing flowers and withering before finally not being able to do it anymore. Is that true?
In: Biology
Flower bulbs allow that one individual plant to sprout and grow again after each winter.
But the seeds allow many new flowers to grow over a large area. They also allow the DNA from multiple plants to mix together for greater genetic resilience.
You can split a bulb to make 2 flowers but this is not a natural occurrence, so a flower cannot depend on this for reproduction. Also the resulting plants are genetically identical and would be susceptible to disease if it were the plant’s only means of reproduction.
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