Lilium 2011

[Tony Willis]

Lilium parryi from California a bulb I purchased last autumn

[Regelian]

Two species lilium blooming today.  Certainly easy in the garden. (which is why I manage to grow them)

L. leichtlinii
L. henryi

[Michael J Campbell]

Two from the local Supermarket.?

[kalle-k.dk]

Today I got a pleasant surprise. Below a large Rhododendron I found this little lily. I had forgotten that I had planted it there for a few years ago. I made it from seed I got from RHS Lily Group in 2007. It is a rare American species and the name is Lilium maritimum.

[Tony Willis]

A couple more lilies in flower,sorry they are not as sharp as I would like.

Both gifts

Lilium michiganense from Kurt Vickery

Lilium canadense from John in Newfoundland

[gote]

A lilium that I hope someone can identify.  Sorry about the poor picture, I'll try and take a better one, but I suspect that someone here might know what it is from this picture.  I have had this twice, the first time it was supposed to be Lilium souilei and the second time it was bought as Lilium amoenum.  I'm sure it's neither!  It has dangerous looking black stem bulbils and doesn't flower for me (the first time I had it, it went in the bin).  I'd be grateful for any help in identification, I'm sure others must have had this plant.

It looks like lancifolium to me. I have also received lancifolium by "mistake" (under the name callosum)
I am aware that many strains of lancifolium are infected and symptomless, however, those I grow seem not to harm any neighbours. Presently I am trying to rise a strain of diploid seedlings in order to be eally sure.
Göte
 

[Tim Ingram]

Most lilies struggle in our dry summer garden, but we do well with candidum and chalcedonicum. I would also like to try more western US species and humboldtii (grown from seed) has done very well this year, just slightly going over. It has very attractive foliage when it first emerges.

[gote]

Most lilies struggle in our dry summer garden, but we do well with candidum and chalcedonicum. I would also like to try more western US species and humboldtii (grown from seed) has done very well this year, just slightly going over. It has very attractive foliage when it first emerges.

Bulbiferum will grow in a dry sunny garden. It naturalizes here in roadbanks and stone walls.
Göte

[greenspan]

@pascal + arisaema

i grow the same Lilium poilanei and i guess they come from the same chinese source . every stem shows buds (1 to 5 buds). i guess it will last some weeks, till flowering. i stored the pot outside from beginning may in a shadowy place. i can't remember where, but somewhere in i-net i had read, that this lily doesn't like warmth and won't flower under too warm conditions. this seems to be a wrong information when i see, that pascal stored his lilies under warm greenhouse conditions. has anybody more information about the location, where this lily was found? could it be the Fansipan/Fan Si Pan range in north-vietnam, near the chinese border?

this "poilanei" seems closely related to Lilium primulinum var. burmanicum.

[arisaema]

@pascal + greenspan

It's probably easier just asking the source, but I think he's off doing fieldwork in Tibet. It's from the border area anyway, either around Lao Cai or maybe further west? His L. amoenum come from low altitudes around Hekou.

Greenspan; I'm not sure all the images on The Genus Lilium are to be trusted? Crûgs L. poilanei is yellow and looks very close to some pictures of L. primulinum v. ochraceum...

> Regarding majoense, who knows where it occurs...... As Lilium are used as medicine throughout these areas they might as well be cultivated and escaped.

There's a very limited number of species used for food, and I don't think L. majoense is among them. While Chen Yi's bulbs may be cultivated I strongly suspect they infact do originate from Sichuan. Do you have access to the original description?

@Gøte + Diane

Here's the thread with CYs "souliei" in flower: http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=4158.0

[greenspan]

yes i noticed the same, that some of the fotos in markus website-project "the-genus-lilium.com" seem to be wrong labelled. do you think the fotos of lilium primulinum are wrong on the-genus-lilium-site? i think, that the Lilium poilanei in the form of pascals lily seems to be very close related to Lilium primulinum. isn't it obvious?

[Pascal B]

As many Asian Lilium are quite hard to identify no doubt some of the pictures on the Lilium.com site might not be under the correct species. What also often happens is that an initial identification is copied over and over again and taken as the reference for that name without actually knowing if that identification was correct in the first place. Although I am not really into Lilium taxonomy or familiar with the discerning characters, in order to identify this N Vietnam species I copied the original description of poilanei during my last visit to the Leiden herbarium. With the help of David Scherberich I managed to translate it from French and it is like this:

Lilium poilanei Gagnepain
1-1.50 m tall, drying orange-red, shiny. Leaves sessile, scattered, lanceolate, attenuate at base, acuminate near top, paler below, 10 cm long  x 10-15 mm, the upper barely smaller, serving as bracts, about 3-5 ribs at underside of leaf. Terminal inflorescence, as a leafy cluster to 20 cm, 5-6 flowers, creamy white, with red lines, 9-10 cm long, funnel-shaped, almost cylindrical and obtuse in bud. - Perianth not striped or spotted; petals almost similar, equal, inside ones a little wide, 2 cm, all wider above the middle, wide and long attenuated at the base, pale yellow, darker at the top with an Andrinople-red (it is a kind of red color) line in the middle, at the end of anthesis strongly revolute. Stamens not reaching the apex of perianth parts, filament filiform awl-like, 6 cm long, glabrous, anther oblong, 12 mm long, loose, green, yellow pollen. Ovary cylindrical, truncated, 15 mm long, style gradually dilated upwards stigmata capitate, trilobate, 4 mm wide, exceeding the anthers.
Tonkin: kilometer 8, pass of Lo-qui-ho, near Chapa (Poilane).
Laos: between Muong-het and M. Seng (Polain)

It should be noted that the description is accompanied by a drawing clearly showing 2 broad basal leaflets of the peduncle but the flower shape is more funnel shaped than the flower on my pictures.
Probably next week I will return to the herbarium and look up the description of primulinum and its varieties. The primulinum reference states Flora of British India and Bot Mag so the last publication should show a painting of it and usually the Bot Mag paintings are in full habit.

As Baker described primulinum in 1892, it predates poilanei and it really depends on the question if Gagnepain was familair with this description and he didn't "re-describe" the same taxon in a form at its easterly limit? Being described in the Flora of India suggest that primulinum was described from one of the states neighbouring Burma, still a long way away from N Vietnam.... The pictures of the various collections on the Crûg website are not all showing the same flower but the KWJ12064 and HWJ681 are not flowering size yet so I can't confirm if they are the same or different or that we are talking about a rather polymorphic species.

[arisaema]

They are obviously all quite closely related, probably why the authors of the FoC decided to synonymize them all under L. primulinum and L. nepalense... The original descriptions would be incredibly helpful, without them we're just left guessing.

[Pascal B]

I know it is a long shot but if anyone has acces to Botanical Magazine already and can scan the description and painting? The copyright on the old Botanical Magazines no longer applies so can be published on the internet. I can photocopy the article during my next visit but can't scan them, otherwise it will be a picture from a black & white copy or a picture taken with a cameraphone as cameras are not allowed in the library....

[Pascal B]

The drawing from the Lilium poilanei description, a somewhat "artist impression"  that is not really helpful....