What is the Difference Between a Tulip Bulb and a Seed?

Many people want to know the difference between a tulip bulb and a seed. Is there a difference between growing a tulip from a seed or from a bulb? How does a bulb differ from a seed, like a sunflower seed?

Let's start with the basic definition of an ordinary flower bulb. There are many different definitions you can find on gardening websites. Here are five similar, but different definitions:

1. An underground leaf bud enwrapped in fleshy scales or coats.
   
2. A short underground stem, with many fleshy scale-like leaves filled with food, often remaining viable during times when leaves die back and the rest of the plant is dormant.
   
3. Fleshy scales that are actually modified leaf structures that store energy and protect the developing plant, usually underground. Some are fleshy and some are papery coverings. An onion is one example
   
4. A storage organ, usually underground, made up of fleshy scales wrapped around each other from which flowers and leaves are produced.
   
5. Underground plant part derived from a short, usually rounded, shoot that is covered with scales or leaves.

Let's pull out the common elements. A tulip bulb is the bottom part of a tulip plant. When the bulb is planted in the soil and begins to come to life, roots and shoots break through the outer wall. Roots dig deeper into the soil to collect water and nutrients. Shoots grow upward and break through the surface of the soil and grow into the green plant that bears a tulip flower.

A bulb is a "storage organ." It stores food in the "fleshy scales" around the "core" of the bulb. That core grows into next year's plant.

According to Wikipedia, a seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. The seed coat is a hard case that protects the tiny plant inside. Seeds grow inside a flower or fruit. A seed can be harvested, cleaned, dried and planted to create new flowers and plants

Tulip flowers have tulip seeds within the blossom. You can harvest a seed from a tulip flower and plant it. Just be prepared to wait a long time for a flower to grow. A number of gardening sources say that it can take five-to-seven years before a tulip plant from seed will form a flower. That is different from a tulip bulb, which will produce a tulip  plant and flower the very next year. When planted and nurtured in right soil, of course.

Flower seeds can range from the size of the head of a pin, like in wild flowers, up to an inch long for sunflowers. The biggest seed in the plant kingdom is from a coco de mer palm tree found in the Silhouette Islands in the Seychelles. That seed can weigh up to 17.6 kilograms or 38 pounds!

Tulip bulbs are very large compared to most flower seeds. A tulip bulb is measured by its circumference in centimeters. Most tulip bulbs measure 11-12 centimeters in circumference which is about 1.5 inches in diameter and are between 1.5 inches to 2.5 inches high.

Here's one more, significant difference between tulip bulbs and seeds. Seeds often grow at the furthest end of a plant, tree or flower. Bulbs do not. A tulip bulbs multiplies by dividing into two bulbs that are attached to each other near the roots of the plant.