LILIES FROM SEED. 



383 



LILIES FROM SEE]). 



By F. W. BuRBiDGE, M.A., V.M.H. 



In this short paper I beg to urge the more frequent rearing of garden 

 Lilies from seed, as ripened in British gardens, and sown for the most 

 part in the open air. 



So far but few hybrid or cross-bred Lilies have been reared in English 

 or Irish gardens, and I have long felt, with other growers and admirers of 

 these handsome and popular flowers, that, in suitable climates and on 

 genial soils in these islands, much more good work might be done in this 

 way. 



Apart altogether from cross-breeding, however, I urge the rearing of 

 seedling stocks of all the hardiest and best of garden Lilies, because I 

 believe that home-grown seedlings have a tendency to be hardier and 

 more vigorous, or in any case are more adaptable to the soil on which 

 they are raised, than are imported bulbs and their offsets, which are at 

 present almost entirely relied upon in our gardens. 



Nearly all the species and many of the varieties of Lilies seed so 

 freely, especially if their flowers are carefully pollinated, that, so far as 

 good sound seed is concerned, there is little or no difficulty in the matter. 

 A few good hybrid and cross-bred Lilies have been raised in England 

 and in America, on the Continent, and also, either naturally or artificially, 

 in Japan ; but, as I before said, it is not so much cross-bred variations 

 that are required as new-born and healthy stocks of a lithe best-known 

 garden species ; and such stocks, I hold, can in no better way be obtained 

 than from home-grown seeds as grown on British soil. Seedling plants 

 very often possess strong and healthy constitutions, and succeed far 

 better than vegetative or divided stock. 



We want at least one cultivator to do for our garden Lilies what 

 Mr. Engleheart has done for our Daffodils, and I think that we should 

 then hear far less of Lily failures and of the Lily fungus disease. Apart 

 altogether from variations in form or colour, we shall be able to ■ obtain 

 healthier and more permanent stock bulbs from seedlings, as reared at 

 home under cultivation, than we shall by the almost invariable planting 

 of imported bulbs. 



This is true of all bulbous as well as of other garden plants and 

 flowers ; but Lilies have never received the attention in this way that 

 they really deserve. As I have said, hybrid Lilies have been raised in 

 England, and the late Mr. Isaac Davis, of Ormskirk, used to raise line 

 healthy stock of Lilium auratum and of its varieties — and especially of 

 the red-rayed L. a. cruentum — from seed. He had a splendid Rhododeur 

 dron and Azalea soil, which suited many Lilies, and especially the gold- 

 rayed L. auratum, perfectly ; but he used to attribute much of his success 

 to the fact of there being neiu life in the seedlings, whereas the offsets 

 and scales merely reproduced the life of the original imported bulbs, which 

 not unfrequently contained within them the fungoid or other germs of 

 disease. 



