Generally, the part that is used for TC-propagation is something that was already a bulb – a stem- or scale-bulblet, or an aerial “bulbil” that some species produce. Chopped into rice-sized pieces, suspended in nutrient gel in sterile tubes or jars and stashed in a drawer or shelf for several months to “do their thing,” a certain number of them will escape contamination and thrive as new bulblets. Once a culture has grown and proven to be “clean,” it can be “sub-cultured” in new test-tubes of a high-sugar (LM) medium, to make more or larger bulbs, as is done in commercial operations.

 The trouble with bulb-TC is that no matter how careful you are, it is almost impossible to totally eliminate contamination, because some of the molds and fungi that live in the soil will be inside the scale tissues, not just on the surface where they can be washed off. Some other parts of lilies can be used instead – leaf-nodes (where aerial bulbils might grow, even if they aren’t present), the “meristem” (- used when trying to free a variety of virus, though no flowers can be produced that year), and amazingly enough, flower-buds! Little ones are best (the cells of an immature bud being exactly as they will be in the expanded bloom, but small and undifferentiated at this stage.) The specific parts used are the “receptacle” or base (where the bud joins the stem), and the ovary - the little green cylinder down in the center of the bud, that matures into a seedpod after the flower petals fall. Bud-cultures do require special plant-hormones in the nutrient formula to cause the cells to divide instead of expanding – especially in an older bud - and sometimes they need an extra culturing step if they don’t stop cell-division at the callus -stage and go on to produce little bulbs instead of just a larger and larger mass – but otherwise both types of TC are the same in principle: cut off and discard unnecessary stuff (roots, leaves, stem, filaments, petal-parts), chop the remainder into small chunks, drop into prepared test-tubes, recap, settle firmly with a quick tap on the counter, and slip into the waiting bag or rack. You’ll soon get into a rhythm, “dipping and flaming” your tool every few minutes to clean it, setting it in the holder and taking up a cool one.