130 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Sess. lxxxvi 



all appear to agree that nepalense is rather a difficult 

 lily to cultivate. Mr. (irove in his book on Lilies (p. 34) 

 indicates the same opinion : — 



" As grown in temperate houses in this country the Lily 

 is not so beautiful as manj^ and the distinct suspicion of 

 green in the yellow of the flower, which one may notice 

 sometimes in certain of the Narcissi, somehow conveys the 

 impression that the plant needs more sun to develop the 

 true colours." 



The Chinese record of the occurrence of nepalense (C. H. 

 Wright in Jour. Linn. Soc, vol. xxxvi, p. 133), quotes 

 Henry 9280 and Hancock 392, but is qualified by the 

 statement that nepalense is a species with numerous forms. 

 L. ochraceum and the Yunnan plants which have been 

 identified as L. nepalense in the above record have a wide 

 range in that province. They occur in the Tali and Lichiang 

 ranges, on the Tengyueh side of the province, and also in 

 the much drier eastern part of the province near Yunnan- 

 sen, extending from there into Kweichow. This gives a 

 considerable variation of habitat starting from the drier 

 eastern Yunnan, passing through the moderately wet Tali 

 and Lichiang areas and ending in the wetter Tengyueh 

 and Upper Burma zone. The plants of the latter area are 

 the ones which approximate most to the Nepal plant. The 

 changes in the character of this lily vary as the course is 

 taken westwards. In the drier Chinese areas we start with 

 a definite Martagon Lily, sometimes dwarf, but not neces- 

 sarily so. The leaves of the plant of the dry area are 

 usually narrow, often " one-nerved," often very numerous, 

 and as I have noticed both on the dried specimens and in 

 cultivation, frequently of ver}^ firm consistency and some- 

 what curved and twisted. Some of these characters are 

 obviously a response to environment. At the other end 

 of the scale we have the Central Himalayan plant, an 

 Archelirion, with usually thinnish leaves, and these are 

 more or less distinctly 5-7-nerved. The Burmese and 

 frontier specimens are intermediate, inclining most perhaps 

 towards nepalense itself. Before we go farther it might 

 be well to in(|uire whether Franchet was right in assuming 

 ochraceum to be of the Martagon type. 



