The capsules, seed, and seedlings of the tiger lily, 



Lilium tigrinum 



A. B. Stout 

 (with four text figures) 



For at least fifty years, tiger lilies have been rather widely 

 cultivated in European and American gardens. The bulbs of 

 this lily first came into England as early as 1804, and there have 

 been many shipments of the bulbs of tiger lilies to Europe and 

 America from the Orient, and especially during the last fifty 

 years of trade relations. At least five varieties differing in some 

 particular from the general type .of the tiger lily have come into 

 culture. 



As far as the writer has been able to determine, there is no 

 record that any of the tiger lilies have ever been self-fruitful. 

 There is oft repeated mention that they have been entirely 

 fruitless. There seems to be no record, at least outside of 

 Japanese or Chinese literature, as to how these varieties origi- 

 nated — whether from seeds or as bud sports. Apparently the 

 propagation of all the types of tiger lilies has been entirely vege- 

 tative by means of the divisions of the mother bulbs and the use 

 of the bulblets which are abundantly produced as buds along the 

 stems in the axils of the leaves. 



In the Orient the tiger lily has been in cultivation, it is said, 

 for more than a thousand years. There it evidently exists in 

 cultivation and as an escape far beyond its original habitat. 

 Mr. Ernest H. Wilson, who speaks from much personal observa- 

 tion in the Orient, states of this lily in his recent book "The 

 Lilies of Eastern Asia," 



In China I have seen it undoubtedly wild on the foothills of the Lushan range 

 in Kiangsi province, but nowhere else. In western Hupeh and in Szech'uan I often 

 met with it apparently wild, but close investigation always proved that it has 

 escaped. I believe that it is indigenous on the mountains of Chekiang and Kiangsu 

 provinces in eastern China, and regard the Lushan range as marking the western 

 limit of its distribution. 



But Mr. Wilson has never seen capsules on this lily in the 

 Orient. In a letter to the writer dated January 29, 1926, he 

 makes the following statement: — "During my travels in the 

 Far East I never saw Lilium tigrinum bearing fruit." Evi- 



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