346 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



NOTES ON CHINESE LILIES. 



By Dr. Augustine Henry. 



I PURPOSE in the following notes to give some slight account of the 

 habitat of the Lilies which I met with while collecting in China. The 

 number of species seen by me was not very great. Most of the new 

 Lilies described by Franchet were collected by the French missionaries in 

 regions further west than I penetrated ; and it is evident that the high 

 mountainous regions of Western Yunnan and Szechwan are richer in 

 species than parts to the eastward. 



My first collecting-ground was in Central China, in the vicinity of 

 Ichang, at the eastern end of the Yangtse gorges, and I will speak first 

 of the Lilies observed in this locality. Ichang, though 1,000 miles inland 

 from Shanghai, is only seventy feet above sea-level ; and in the low hills 

 close to the town, amidst the grass, Lilium callosum, S. et Z., grows, but is 

 not very common. This Lily was first discovered in Japan, where the 

 flowers are said to be brilliant scarlet. The colour of the Ichang plant is, 

 however, so far as my notes and my memory are to be depended on, a 

 brilliant orange. In the Kew Herbarium, my specimens, Nos. 511 and 

 2,327, belong to this species. 



Branching off from the gorges of the Yangtse there are many beautiful 

 glens, walled in by high cliffs, and in these Lilium Broicnii, Miellez, is 

 common. It grows in rocky places, in shelter but not in shade. It is 

 very variable in foliage and in the colour of the flowers. I sent some 

 bulbs to Kew from Ichang which turned out to be a new variety, Lilium 

 leucanthum, characterised by bulbils in the axils of the leaves and by 

 short ovate leaves below the ff owers. The colour of this variety is never 

 so yellow in the wild state as it seems to become when cultivated in Eng- 

 land. In the south-east of Yunnan, Lilium leucanthum is the form which 

 is most common ; and it occurs there in similar rocky situations, but at 

 an elevation of 4,000 to 5,000 feet above sea-level. This part of Yunnan 

 is ten degrees south of Ichang. 



Lilium tigrinum, Ker, w^as cultivated by the peasants in their gardens 

 near Ichang, but I never saw this Lily wild in any part of China I have 

 been in. 



Lilium Henry i, Baker, was found by me in only two localities, both 

 near the town of Ichang, and has apparently a restricted distribution. 

 In my journeyings through the high mountains to the north, south, and 

 west of Ichang, I never met with this Lily. It grows on the grassy 

 slopes of precipices, at a height of 200 to 2,000 feet above sea-level on the 

 sides of the Y'^angtse gorges, and of some of the glens, but it is not met 

 with in the bottom of the glens — only on their precipitous walls, and 

 on the tops of cliffs. A few plants "svere seen by me on the Dome, a 

 mountain mass of conglomerate some ten miles south of Ichang. The 

 precipices of the Yangtse gorges where the Lily grows are of limestone. 

 The plant would seem then to be, in the wild state, indifferent as to soil. 



