190 NOTES ON LILIES 



§ 8. Yearly Movement — Elsewhere Dunedin has remarked. — "The bulb 

 moves year by year in its new u:rowtli, or in the i^i-rowth of the new bulb, 

 further away in a direct line from the scars or sites of the growth of 

 preceding years, unless unnatural growth interferes."* — (iardeii, vol. 14, 

 p. 2G2. 



§9. "There is another fallacy, which bylongusage,has been so thoroughly 

 ingrained in the minds of many Lily growers, that I fear it will meet 

 with much opposition before it can bo completely eradicated. I moan the 

 objection against annual lifting and transplanting-. In order to solve the 

 difficulty, it should be asked in the first place. Why annual transplanting 

 is, at present, the exception, rather than the rule r Simply because there 

 is a very general belief that the first year's growth and bloom after trans- 

 planting are inferior to the second, and that consequently annual trans- 

 planting would simply be encouraging a constant repetition of this 

 inferiority. And so it would, if late transplanting is persisted in, and I 

 admit that it would be an act of great folly to transplant the general run 

 of Lilies annually, if we left them in the ground until ' the end of October, 

 or the early part of November,' as a cultivator, in a book lately published, 

 directs. But it would be the very reverse, if the transplanting took place 

 soon after the flowers have faded. In dealing with Lilies in this country, 

 •we should never overlook the fact, that here they are under artificial 

 cultivation ; whereas, in their native places, nature has provided for them 

 everytliing^ that is requisite for their luxuriant and annual successional 

 bloom. To those who may think that annual transplanting is an un- 

 necessary trouble, or who may not care for superior bloom, the present 

 system may be all in all. But, to those who would like to know that 

 tJieir favourites are doing well, and not left a prey to vermin, and, con- 

 sequently, to retarded growth, the annual system is the best ; for too well 

 we know, that a clump of Lily bulbs, left two or three years in the ground 

 — the dead and rotten mixed with the living and growing — is in this 

 country quite a paradise for grubs, slugs, ai d every other pest that is 

 destructive to the growth and flowering of the plant. In order, then, 

 to sweep all such enemies out of our way, let us, about 8 or 10 days after 

 the flowers have faded, lift the plants, and in doing so, take care of the new 

 bulbs that are connected with the stem that have flowered, and are within 



* If these movement views of Dimedin are correct, the infereuce drawn, logically 

 speaking, must lie that Lily bulbs are locomotive, and every year advance in one 

 particular direction. This idcntii-al bulb of Dunedin's, the jnogenitor of wliich was 

 planted 35 years ago, would be now, if it had been left undisturbed, at least a yard, 

 perhaps two yards distant from where its progenitor grew. Is this the fact ? My 

 exiterience leads me to believe that Lilies are stationary, and that I shall find next year 

 in the same spot, the plants (or if you will, their progenitors), that are now in bloom in my 

 igerden. 



t Nature has in many jdaces provided pigs and other long snouted animals to ujiroot 

 the earth, &c., but 1 never heard it before hinted at that there was a gardening purpose 

 in this operation, and that it was better for the bulbs to be thus U])rooted and trans- 

 iplanted annually. Would Dunedin wish us to believe tliat as seeds are, no doubt, 

 intentionally passed through the bodies of birds, and then deiiosited as dung in various 

 new localities, and that thus plants are introduced into new legions : so doubtless bulbs 

 or bulblets, jiassing through the intestines of pigs, are again (b-posited with their manure 

 r.n new localities to periu'tuate the race. 



Sec also the oi>inion of our Indian correspondent, page 17. 



