A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2007 A "corm" is?

Hey guys!
I'm planting glads, and it said to plant the "corm" facing up. Is that the pointy part? (3 of the bulbs are already starting to sprout, and the sprout was on neither the pointy part or the hole part-- they were on the side, so that was no help.) Also, do you plant the bigger ones deeper? Thx!

Hi Ginger! A corm is like a bulb or a rhizome or root ball, where the plants energy store is. Where the sprout is coming out is the top of the corm, plant it that side up. The bottom will have roots or stubs of roots coming out of it.

A corm is a solid mass of stem tissue with a basal plate on the bottom and a terminal shoot bud on top. In addition to the terminal shoot bud, axillary or lateral buds are produced at each of the nodes along the sides of the corm. In the event that the terminal bud should be injured or otherwise prevented from growing, these lateral buds are capable of producing a shoot. The solid stem structure of the corm is protected against injury and water loss by dry leaf bases that are similar to the tunic that enclose true bulbs. Gladiolus and watsonia are typical cormous plants.....gotta love google;-)

forward to plants and flowers...

Hey guys!
Thanks for the answers-- but I think I phrased my question badly.
What I'm really getting at is, I have like 60 of these bulbs. (Okay, corms.) 3 of them are sprouting, but the rest are not. They pretty much look like an onion. They don't have anything on the "sides", as one of the definitions said, or any roots or root stubs. They have one spot, which I think of as the "top", that has a slight point, and on the "bottom" they have a place that is indented. I THINK that I should be planting the pointy part on top, towards the sun, but I'm not sure. Is that right?

(Sorry, I know this is an ignorant question, but I've never planted bulbs before.)

Ginger, we don't have any problem with a question like that...
or to re~ask or clarify a question..
If you didn't get it, we always encourage to re~ask if you don't quite get it..
That's how we learn...

The way you described it, is you've got it right..
The pointy end goes up..

*examine your bulbs that are sprouting and hold them up against the one's that aren't yet...
and see if you can see a line of similarities..

Most time the discription for bulbs is a pointy end and a flat/hairy end..

~~~>Pointy being up, and flat hairy end down..

But they do say, if you can't really tell..
*and trust me some of them can be very difficult even for a seasoned gardener *
that you can plant a bulb on it's side..
and it will get to the top...
and roots will go down...

Do you happen to have any pictures of the bulbs/corms you're wonderin' about??????

Hi all you experts. Whilst you are giving advice on corms can I ask a question as a VERY new gardner.
I bought a corm on eBay (actually it was an arisaema griffithii but I don't think that will matter). When it arrived it had a tiny, about half inch, what looked like a baby corm on the side. I was tempted to cut this off and plant it in a pot and the main corm in the garden. But being a completely ignorant new guy and having nowhere to go to for for advice I bottled out and planted the lot in the garden. Did I do right or should I have taken the baby off and planted seperately? Any advice would be much appreciated. Sorry if this should have been a new thread but it is about corms.

I don't plant alot of bulbs, and I am hoping
that there are others' out there that have and definately know..

but my rule of thumb with my bulbs (or corms')is,
if there's tiny baby one's, I leave them...
And if theres' decent sized one's,
I pull and plant seperately...
The one side of me as a gardener says, it is "better to be safe than sorry"....

But the other side of me as a gardener
loves' to experiment... and I might have taken
one or two off *maybe the biggest one's of the babies* and planted them, JUST TO SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN...

Thanks Weezie, that answered my question perfectly. And that's so clever to plant them sideways if you can't tell!