24 ARISTOCRATS OF THE GARDEN 



size will be found more healthy and will give results 

 more satisfactory than a large, loose, and flabby bulb. 

 Purchasers who make mere size their standard of 

 value often defeat the object they have most closely 

 in view. I examined some bulbs of the wild L. 

 auratum and found them only about a couple of 

 inches in diameter though they bore heads of from 

 three to six flowers and, also, were absolutely free of 

 any sign of disease. Later, I asked one of the largest 

 and perhaps the best-informed Japanese grower of 

 Lilies why he did not dig and sell these wild bulbs 

 since they were so healthy and vigorous. With a 

 smile he answered: "My dear sir, I tried it once and 

 found that neither in Europe nor America could a 

 purchaser be found for bulbs so small!" 



Of the genus Lilium, to which all true Lilies belong, 

 about eighty species are known. All are confined to 

 the waste places of the Northern Hemisphere and more 

 than half of them are indigenous in China and Japan. 

 The genus ranges through the temperate and sub- 

 tropic regions from eastern North America to Cali- 

 fornia and through eastern Asia, the Himalayas, and 

 Siberia to the extreme limits of western Europe. It 

 is absent from the plains of the middle west of North 

 America and from central Asia, and there are other 

 considerable gaps in the field of distribution. Two 



