I never
fail to experience a letdown when the month and a half long
display of the rose season ends, which is, after all, a truly
magnificent sight. It takes a
couple of weeks to recover their absence, to notice that there are other flowers out there, and
they are blooming their heads
off – with both shouts and murmurs of "Look at me!" And the
biggest and most
startling shouts are from the lilies.
I've increased our lily plantings
every year until there's not a spot in the gardens where there aren't
some nodding above the perennials and in
between the reblooming roses that are starting another round of
blooms after their early pruning. I started collecting them seriously
to relieve the after-rose-bloom torpor hanging over the garden, and in
fact have ordered
and planted several hundred more this past fall. There's no better time
to order
new bulbs and plants than during the season showing a lack in certain
beds of color.
Some of the taller lilies, especially in the species, Tigirinum (tiger lilies), grow to
eight feet and could use other, shorter lilies at their feet. All our
lilies are interplanted with lower-growing perennials, but the shorter
lilies add needed color, especially if the perennials as, for instance,
peonies, have only their glossy leaves after their bloom is
finished. I also went around putting in half-circle supports on
the tallest and most vulnerable lilies starting their late bloom in
late summer, like
this
heirloom trumpet, 'Black Dragon' shown at left below.
The height mentioned in the tall lily descriptions doesn't necessarily
show up
the first year, or even the second year, but simply increases and
increases the older the plant becomes until it reaches its maximum. The
'Black Dragon' here is over
two
feet higher than it was last year and tops my height by at least a
foot.
I understand that the seed used for breeding this spectacular lily was
collected from cottage gardens in China. The strain was first named
'Black Magic', with the emphasis on magic,
I presume, and 'Back Magic' eventually produced the 'Black Dragon'
strain. The flowers are pure white with yellow throats and with a rich
rose on the outer, curved petals (in lilies, called tepals).
In ordering and planting lilies I always take care to order enough to
arrange each variety and color in clumps of four or five. Not too close
that theyare crowded together, but about four to five inches apart in
the hole. Planted this way, the flowers on the plant can be seen
all around the stem, but very much comprise and eye-catching group.
Singly, I find them pretty much lost within other plants in the bed,
especially if the color of the flowers is delicate. In fact, I put a
couple of the brilliant 'Scheherazade' against a backdrop of Rosa glauca, a robust plant here in
Cache Valley. The rose spread, and though the liliy itself was not
overwhelmed, its flowers tended to melt into the lush blue-green
foliage of the glauca which surrounded and overtopped them
The Benefits of Lilies
These stately flowers have been much loved
down through the ages. The wild lilies of Europe, Asia, and North
America were of fleeting
beauty, but were most likely all the more valued for their short bloom
life. In Medieval gardens lilies ranked with roses as
devotional of flowers.
An emblem
of the Virgin Mary was the Madonna lily (shown below right).
Its white petals emblematic in legend of Mary's purity, its yellow
anthers the light of her soul. The lilies of Benedictine monastery
gardens (or Rosaries) as far
back as the
Saint's own garden, were associated with Mary through the titles
applied
to her of, Rose of Sharon, Lily of the Valley, and Lily among the Thorns.
Aside from purity, chastity, and beauty the lily was a symbol of
fertility from anicent times, coming as it appeared in the spring from
within bare soil from an unprepossessing bulb. Crowning it all was the
lily's fragrance, especially apparent in the walled gardens of modest
dwellings, palaces, monastaries, and nunneries. The phrase, lilies of
the field, mentioned in the Judea-Christian Bible may have referred to
any number of other plants growing wild in the hills and protected
places in the surrounding country, but it most surely included lilies.
In
my particular case, and aside from their spectacular color and their
dependability through the season, lilies assure
me that life goes on in the world that we've been living in for the
past seven years, even without the comfort of June's and July's
bounty of roses.
Lilium regale
The
Regal Lily is another China native. As described by Edward Austi McRae
in his excellent book, Lilies (Timber Press), "This species is native
to western Sichuan Province in China, growing in narrow canyons with
steep, rocky sides." He goes on,
The regal lily is a most
valuable introduction of E.H. Wilson, who found it in China in
1903.... where the climate is very hot in summer and very cold in
winter. In June, however, these canyons are transformed into a paradise
when the regal lilies blooms by the hundredsof thousands on cliffs 1600
meters (5200 feet) high. Here in 1910 Wilson selected about 6000 to
7000 small bulbs, which became the foundation stock of commercial
production of this lily in the West.
The spectacle of
hundreds of thousands of these lilies (below) on cliffs 5200 feet high
is mind-boggling to me, though the types we grow in our gardens today
are most likely more lasting and larger, heavier, than their forebears.
The Regal
lily sets seed, though it may cross with some other types nearby. So
far I haven't seen such crossing with our stock. They do multiply
readily, however, by offsets, and seem to be resistant to the most
awful weather that Cache Valley can throw at it.
In our zone 5-6 garden, the Regal lilies open in June and early July
with white petals, tinged with pink, and a deep rose throat. Its period
of bloom depends on location. The plants in the sunnier cutting garden
open much earlier than the ones here on the east side under the shade
of a pair of old elms.
Tiger Lilies
No story on lilies would be complete
without mentioning the old fashioned tiger lily. For years these lilies were known as Lilium tigrinum, and still are
offered under that name in some nursery catalogs, though they are now
classed as Lilium lancifolium
for their lance-shaped leaves. Whatever their name, these charmers have
long held a favorite place in gardens that sport lilies, and are the
ones I remember from when I was a child.
The most recognizable forms are the orange ones with reflex petals that
are spotted with chocolate brown. The pollen is reddish brown and the
plants tend to hybridize readily with other types. They bloom from
August to late September, unlike the Asiatic types whose petals face
mostly upwards and bloom in early summer.
There are yellow forms of lilies recognizable as tiger lilies in shape,
like the pale yellow 
'Citronella' pictured below right. This lily is
classified by McRae as a separate strain, Citronella, as coming from
crosses between two other types. They nevertheless are pendant, have
strongly recurved leaves, are peppered with chocolate spots, and so I
continue, as an amateur gardener that I am, to refer to them as tiger
lilies. My 'Cintronella' tigers grow to five feet tall and need to be
corralled around a fairly stout stake. I use green metal stakes that
are strong, but unobtrusive in the middle of the abundant blooms, and
they pretty much disappear.
Right now, though, we're in the dead of winter and it was 0o F
this morning. I don't know how the plants and trees and shrubs stand
it, but they mostly seem to live through it. Happily, I have a pile of
flower
catalogs by the sofa waiting to be read and lists to make. It
all makes life worth living.
Three
more months until Spring,
Joan Katherine Shaw
January 1, 2008
Photos
- Joan Katherine Shaw
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