February, 1906 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



29 





Lilies the World Really Needs 



By Wilhelm Miller 



LILIES well illustrate the most important 

 fact in plant breeding, viz., that at 

 least half the battle is to find out what the 

 world wants. You and I could walk through 

 a ten-acre cauliflower patch on Long Island 

 and never know whether there was a single 

 plant in the whole outfit that ought to be 

 saved for seed. Professor W. W. Tracy, the 

 veteran seedsman, could tell. He could tell 

 us the points of a cauliflower just as you may 

 know the points of a St. Bernard dog. But 

 you and I do not know what kind of a cauli- 

 flower the market demands, nor what one, 

 most important quality the existent varieties 

 lack. If we did, we could seize upon the 

 slightest advance along that particular line. 



Without such knowledge, you and I would 

 not be plant breeders — merely gamblers, with 

 the chances a thousand to one against us. 

 Yet the one thing that amateurs almost never 

 do is to study the market end of a problem. 

 America is full of dilettante inventors, who pin 

 their faith on "inspiration" and never try 

 to find out what value the world puts upon a 

 thing. The patent office is full of inventions 

 by country mechanics, who work alone and 

 never get their ideas corrected by commerce 

 with other people in the same line of work. 

 And, sad to say, there is a regularly organized 

 system of "bleeding" these good people by 

 preying upon their vanity. So, too, there 

 are, or have been, thousands of varieties of 

 potatoes, dahlias, chrysanthemums, etc., 

 raised by amateurs which are utterly and 

 justly forgotten, simply because they were 

 not along the main line of development. 

 They were side issues. Nobody wanted 

 them. They were not enough better. 



There is no short and easy way to find out 

 what the world needs in lilies or in anything 

 else, but there is one method which is generally 

 pursued by the masters of invention — the 

 method of comparative study. Your trained 

 inventor, like Edison or Elihu Thompson, 

 does not work by chance or by "inspiration"; 

 he painfully finds out something the world 

 lacks — not a little want, but a big one. 

 Then he sends for all the patents along that 

 line. He gets a whole "sub-class" for $10 

 or $15. In a week's study of previous in- 

 ventions he can find out what is the matter 

 with them all, what they lack, and the line 

 of effort is then clear. So, too, with lilies. 

 You must grow them all and talk with other 



growers before you can create varieties worth 

 while. 



There are only two lilies, in my opinion, 

 that the world really needs — a better Easter 

 lily and a hardy white lily that will live out- 

 doors all winter in the North. As nearly as 

 I can make out, there are more dollars spent 

 for Easter lilies than for any other kind. 

 The dollar sign is usually a safe guide, but 

 not always. In this case the true cause lies 

 deeper. The lily at Easter appeals, not 

 merely to a sense of beauty but to a funda- 

 mental religious instinct. You find white 

 lilies in some of the oldest pictures of the 

 Resurrection. Easter is the greatest flower 

 festival of the year; white is the favorite color 

 then; lilies have been an Easter symbol fcr 

 many centuries. No wonder we spend a 

 quarter of a million annually for Easter 

 lilies. 



I presume that the people of southern 

 Europe do not have to force lilies for Easter 

 as we do. Their lily — the lily of history — 

 used to be forced by American florists until 

 the Bermuda lily took its place. The old 

 Annunciation or Madonna lily (Lilium can- 

 didum) has a bell-shaped flower, the Bermuda 

 lily (Lilium longiflorum, var. exitnium) has 

 a large trumpet-shaped flower. These are 

 the only two lilies that have ever taken 

 kindly to forcing, and the main reason why 

 the Bermuda lily displaced the Annunciation 

 lily is that the florists could make it flower 

 with greater ease and certainty than the 

 other. 



The Bermuda lily is really a native of Japan, 

 and it has been injured by the slovenly 

 methods of "get-rich-quick" bulb growers 

 in Bermuda. It has at least seven impor- 

 tant insect enemies and diseases. Bermudan 

 greed has nearly, if not quite, killed the goose 



that laid the golden egg. The only sure way 

 to get rid of the troubles which cause such 

 heavy losses to our florists seems to be the 

 revolutionary method proposed by the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, viz., to 

 grow the bulbs ourselves from seed. Mr. 

 George W. Oliver, of the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry, has grown salable bulbs from seed 

 in ten months — a feat which everybody 

 supposed would require three or four years. 

 He has even grown lilies from seed in six 

 months and thirteen days. 



The problem of the Easter lily, therefore, 

 is in good hands. Meanwhile the best thing 

 the amateur and the florist can do is to pay 

 a high price for Bermuda-grown bulbs for 

 Christmas forcing and get the Japan-grown 

 bulbs in November for Easter forcing. It 

 may be years before the Department dis- 

 tributes the new stock. The regular course 

 is to send novelties to commercial growers 

 who are interested, and let them multiply 

 the stock for the people; the public would 

 only waste such things. I wouldn't write 

 the Secretary now for bulbs. He will tell 

 us all at the proper time. We cannot get 

 them any sooner. 



However, if you can't wait you can grow 

 Easter lilies yourself from seed. You can 

 send for the Department bulletin, which tells 

 you just how to do it. You can read "The 

 Easter Lily — a Romance of Horticulture" 

 in Country Life in America for April, 1904. 

 After this, if no clear-cut plan of action sug- 

 gests itself you will never be a second Bur- 

 bank. You will only "putter." 



It is more than likely that the problem of 

 the hardy white lily will be solved, as a by- 

 product of the Easter lily study, because 

 Lilium longiflorum is said to come from a 

 part of Japan whence we get other things 



The Annunciation, or Madonna lily (L. candidum) is the best white hardy lily we have, but it is not good enough. 

 There is a fortune awaiting the man who can give us & better one 



