Lilium 2009

[johnw]

Lilium lophopherum

Later I found, that these are told to be not fully hardy outside. Can anybody confirm this or
do you have other experiences? If better grown in a pot, which growing medium: moist or dry,
good drainage needed....?

Thomas

No expert but I think this one is quite hardy. It probably does not like high heat (30c+) combined with humidity for more than a day or two and especially at night.  These days we grow it  in a pot in a screened greenhouse as the lily beetle is a problem.  We use clay pots for loph, oxy, nanum (nanum departed company!). Mix is 50% ground rotted pine /spruce bark & leafmould (50/50) 50% peat, this we mix with maybe 15-20% perlite, 5% sand and 10% coarse grit; + trace elements, superphosphate, pinch gypsum & lime, blood & bonemeal, seaweed meal, some slow release at the bottom - ie rich-humus-open mix-drainage. I think they like the extra air in unglazed clay pots. Careful watering in spring before roots fully developed. Run cold, 0-5c, and quite dry but not parched in winter when dormant.  

Or plant out in a cool peat bed situation in half sun.

johnw

[Thomas Huber]

Hi John, thanks for the tipps. For L. lophopherum I will try to plant it in a cool peat bed outside as sugested.
The others will be planted in a pot, but I will try one single plant of each outside, to see how they do 

[gote]

A question to the lily experts:
I ordered the following:
Lilium amoenum
Lilium lophopherum
Lilium regale
Later I found, that these are told to be not fully hardy outside. Can anybody confirm this or
do you have other experiences? If better grown in a pot, which growing medium: moist or dry,
good drainage needed....?

Regale should be fully hardy outdoors and need no special treatment.
Loppophorum is quite hardy but short-lived. A woodsy situation will suit it. A Peat bed might be just right.
Amoenum is also relatively hardy but seems to dislike too cold soil temperature. It has a tendency of surviving in the soil without starting into growth.
I would try all three outside in your place. Regale in a sunny position, the two others in a more shady.
Cheers
Göte 

[johnw]

Göte  - I have heard it said that both Lilium regale and Lilium candidum should initially be planted very late in the year, December if possible,  to prevent shoots appearing in the autumn.  Is this true?  I grow neither.  I assumed maybe they are imported from areas where they are forced - ie Bermuda etc.

johnw

[Lesley Cox]

I don't have L. amoenum but the others are quite hardy outdoors here but we don't have lower than about -5 or -6C.

John I could send some seeds of L. nanum later in the summer if you'd like. They flower from seed in less than 3 years.

[Thomas Huber]

Thanks Göte and Lesley. Will try them all outside now after reading your experiences.
John perhaps you will see the result next May 

[gote]

Göte  - I have heard it said that both Lilium regale and Lilium candidum should initially be planted very late in the year, December if possible,  to prevent shoots appearing in the autumn.  Is this true?  I grow neither.  I assumed maybe they are imported from areas where they are forced - ie Bermuda etc.

johnw

Lilium candidum is adapted to mediterrean climate. I.e. to rest in the dry hot summertime and to start into growth in the autumn when the rain starts. I am unable to grow it for that reason. My winter is too cold and the growth that came in the autumn dies. I doubt (but I do not know) that you can prevent this from happening by late planting. However if you can, this means that you must lift the plant again in the summer after flowering and keep it dry and probably warm as well.

Regale grows like any other lily i.e. it starts in the spring. To plant it very late would mean that it starts with less roots. Regale is a stem rooter so it would probably be OK but weakened.

If Regale starts in the autumn it must be that it has come from the south side of the equator or something or severely stressed.

Candidum is the only Lilium I know that starts in the fall.
Cheers
Göte   

[Tony Willis]

John

Lilium candidum has been a traditional cottage garden plant here and most are virused. As Gote says they make a rosette of leaves about now which sits there through the winter and then comes up to flower late spring.

I have seen it in flower once in Central Greece growing on a cliff. A splendid sight.

[Lori S.]

I've had Lilium candidum growing here for many years, perhaps surprisingly.  It has adapted somehow to our short season, and blooms quite late - in August (as compared to June-July as stated in McRae's book).  Also, I have not noticed any summer dormancy period here.  (With it blooming so late, it would have to pack a lot of activity into a very short season, if it was to act as it does in its native climate!)  I do get the winter rosette forming and surviving, despite the mixed-up life cycle, and the cold climate and usual lack of snow cover.   

Strangely enough, I don't seem to have any photos of it in flower, but here is one of the overwintering rosette, from Dec. 4, 2008.   (The ground is frozen, but as you can see, there is no snow cover.)

I had to move it late this summer, as I realized it was totally overhung and shaded out by other plants.  The bulbs looked fine but the top growth had all died down, so it has be no winter rosette this winter.  I hope I haven't killed the darn thing with my neglect... acckkk!  Oh well... 

[gote]

Lori,
That is really interesting. You might have got a strain that has adapted to a colder climate. It is surprising how often this happens. If you should get any seed from it sometime I would be very interested.
Cheers
Göte

[Sinchets]

Most old gardens here have L.candidum. It bakes in summer ad puts up fresh rosettes in autumn- just now. They sometimes sit under the snow all winter with no damage. In a dry snowless winter there is some leaf damage. I think it is not a question of hardy strains, but more of what your conditions are like in winter. Too many people assume that plants from Greece never see snow, or experience cold weather.

[Lori S.]

McRae, who ran his nursery in the Pacific NW, stresses that L. candidum needs good drainage, so I'd wonder too if growing success is controlled by conditions (i.e. intolerance of wet), rather than a lack of cold hardiness. 
(That seems to be the usual explanation when a species can be wintered over successfully in colder areas, but not, apparently, in warmer zones; the warmer zones often turn out to be much wetter climates.)

[Lesley Cox]

Too many people assume that plants from Greece never see snow, or experience cold weather.

There are some jolly good ski fields in Greece and LL. chalcedonicum and martagon were both growing near them.

[gote]

I have many times heard the explanation that it is wet that kills and I know that it is sometimes true. I have the same experience from Iris suaveolens and Dipcadi serotinus to name two.
It is, however, only true to a certain extent. I have heard people saying that all is well if the bulbs are kept dry. A later year they had to admit that some of their bulbs, that were kept dry under glass, died when the winter temperatures were colder than usual.

When it comes to Lilium candidum and other Mediterreans they get their water in the winter. They start growing in the fall because this is when the water is there. Of course they need to be well drained but they do neet the water.

The strain/provenience IS very important in many plants. Cardiocrinum giganteum from the Himalayas has never survived a single winter here. Cardiocrinum giganteum from China have never had more severe frost damage than some burning of early emerging leaves. Today many of the plants available in Sweden are imports from Holland. Some of these are considerably more sensitive to cold than strains of the same species that have been grown here for a long time. Unfortunately the old strains are very difficult to find. They are not in the marketplace. If I buy a Sempervivum arachnoideum here it is likely to die the first winter. The strain I inherited from my Grandfather has never been damaged by frost however exposed it grows.
I have never been able to grow Helleborus niger bought in the marketplace. At last I have got a plant of a strain that has been grown in an old cottage garden a very long time. It makes no difficulties at all.

If I buy a Lilium candidum here, it will be imported from a country with mild winters and it is pure luck if it is adapted to my climate. If I get a bulb collected wild from those places in South East Europe that are so cold, it is likely to have a better chanse of surviving. Even better would be a strain adapted to Canada.

I have noted that whoever I am  are talking to: Taxes are to high and traffic to thick in their home country. It does not matter how many cars there are on the roads or wether the taxes are 20% or 55% 
In the same way, people who do have a winter tend to exaggerate the coldness. The frost may go down a meter here and the ice on the lake may be  half a meter thick. Do you relly get such figures in Greece or Bulgaria?? Where Lilium candidum grows wild??

By the way. Around October 1st we had two consecutive nights when the temperature was down below - 3.5°C. In the late winter this year we had -23.5° at a time when the early Helleborus had big buds. My earliest original H orientalis died. So did my Arisaema candidissimum which was sitting well drained and no wetter than the year before

Cheers
Göte

   
 

[Paul T]

Gote,

Your Arisaema candidissimum wasn't up in late winter was it?  Mine doesn't grow here until early summer..... it is the latest of the Arisaemas to shoot for me, well close to that anyway.  Or are you meaning the dormant bulb died?