]27 
LILIUM SPECIOSUM ; var. ALBUM 
(white-flowered showy lily.) 
CLASS. 
HEXANDRTA. 
ORDER . 
MONOGYNIA. 
NATURAL ORDER. 
LILIACEJE. 
Generic Character. — Perianth campanulate, six-parted, with a nectariferous furrow in the sepals. 
Capsule six-furrowed, valves connected with small fibres. Seeds compressed. 
Specific Character.— -Bulb scaly. Stem erect, from three to four feet high and upwards, branching, 
smooth. Leaves ovate-lanceolate, scattered, nervose, somewhat reflexed. Flowers terminal, vary- 
ing in number, one on each branch. Perianth drooping ; segments reflexed and folded, covered 
with little warty excrescences on the inside, rose-coloured, with dark red blotches. 
Var. Album. — Flowers white. 
No one can be acquainted with the many beautiful plants collected by Dr. Siebold 
in Japan, without awarding the preference to those lovely lilies which are now the 
pride of our conservatories. In regard to beauty and magnificence, they rank with 
the most splendid productions of nature ; and L. speciosum and its varieties are 
perhaps superior to any of the others. 
In his excellent Flora Japonica, Dr. Siebold thus speaks of two of these plants : 
“ Among more than twenty kinds of lily brought by me from Japan to Europe, and 
deposited in the Botanic Garden at Ghent, are the varieties of L. speciosum now 
represented. To that with rose-coloured flowers, blotched with purple, I give the 
name of L. speciosum Kcempferii , because it was the indefatigable botanist Ksempfer 
who first made it known to Europeans. For the second, with pure white flowers, 
I preserve the Japanese name Tametomo, which it bears in its own country, in 
consequence of having been first brought by the hero from the Loo-Choo Islands, 
as the Japanese assert. The beauty and fragrance of the flowers of these two 
kinds rank them among the most magnificent of their genus. I should even say 
that L. speciosum Kcempferii stood at the head of them all, if a variety of 
