Addisonia 55 



(Plate 252) 



LILIUM SPECIOSUM 

 Showy Lily 



Native of China and Corea 

 Family Liliaceae Lily Family 



Lilium speciosum Thunb. Trans. Linn. Soc. 2: 332. 1794. 



This late-flowering lily is hardy and easy to grow, and maintains 

 itself year after year without any special attention. One sees it a 

 nodding mass of rosy bloom glorifying many an otherwise humble 

 farmyard. The flowers have a delicate fragrance and the glossy 

 copious dark-green foliage blends excellently with almost any border 

 or garden planting. The flowers bloom in August and September 

 and are, with the tiger lily, the last of the procession of lilies. They 

 are beautiful when planted with white phlox, Campanula pyrami- 

 dalis, and Salvia azurea. Some consider it the best of all the lilies 

 for the average garden. This lily has long been in cultivation in 

 Japan, to which it was evidently introduced from its native home 

 in Corea and China. It was first sent from Japan to Europe by 

 the well-known Bavarian horticulturist and botanist von Siebold, 

 in 1832, and quickly became a favorite. 



The variety here pictured and described is "magificum," the 

 most vigorous in vegetative growth; this and "Melpomene" are 

 the two most deeply colored of all the varieties. The varieties 

 "rubrum" and "roseum" are paler in color. The variety "album" 

 is nearly pure white with yellow anthers and a green stripe on its 

 perianth-segments. These are the best known of the fifteen va- 

 rieties that have been described. The flower and leaf here shown 

 grew at the New York Botanical Garden from a bulb obtained from 

 John Scheepers, Inc. 



The bulb of the showy lily is perennial and globose, and brown or 

 purplish, especially when exposed to the light ; it is from two to four 

 inches in diameter. The mother-bulb divides freely and bulbs 

 develop on the part of the stem in the soil or just above. The stem 

 is from two to five feet tall and is rigid, erect, glabrous and 

 green or purplish brown. The roots are abundant from the base 

 of the bulb and on the stem above the bulb; this habit makes it 

 easy to grow, and also makes it advisable to plant the bulb deep. 

 The twenty to thirty or more ovate-lanceolate leaves are rounded 

 at the base to a short petiole. The flowers are in a broadly deltoid 

 raceme and are from six to twenty in number. The perianth 



