Tuberose botany

Everyone calls the thing that we plant to grow tuberoses a bulb, but actually it is not a bulb. It is a rhizome with a bulblike new plant attached. If you look closely at what you’re going to plant, you’ll notice that the bottom of it is a light brown color, whereas the top bulby-looking part is closer to white.  The bottom part is the rhizome and the top part is the bulblike main part of the plant that makes leaves and flowers. A rhizome is technically an underground stem from which grow additional new plants, each of which will have its own stems, leaves and roots, and ultimately, rhizomes! This is why they multiply so quickly. The rhizome stores energy needed to produce above ground growth and the wonderful flowers. It also grows outward underground, sprouting new, very small plants called “offsets”. Typically, spreading rhizomes in a plant are longish, but in tuberoses they are very short and mostly unnoticeable.

This is probably way more botany than you need, and for the sake of clarity we’ll just call tuberoses “bulbs” and the small offsets “bulblets”.