18 
In the fully open blooms of Lilium tigrinum the 
petals curl back until they almost touch the base 
of the flower 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
L. Canadense, var. flavum, 
is an easy-to-grow yellow 
sort 
A transparent carmine red, seeming to be laid over 
white, characterizes the Turk's cap L. speciosum, 
var. rubrum 
CONSIDERING 
THE 
LILIES 
Th e Flower of a Hundred Sorts Which Always Come True 
A Score of Good Varieties for the Garden 
OTWITHSTANDING all its subdi¬ 
visions and subgenera, the lily has one 
striking peculiarity: it defies hybridization 
—or it has seemed to, thus far. All the 
lilies in the world appear to have been 
created by divine fiat, and finished. And 
man’s efforts and interferences are, in their 
case, of no avail in changing them. 
This is not to say that no hybrids have 
ever been grown. There have been a great 
many, as a matter of fact, for growers are 
by no means satisfied with what Nature has 
done for us in the way of lilies, any more 
than they are satisfied with what she has 
The “gold banded lily of Japan" is white 
with golden bands, and studded with pur¬ 
ple spots. The flowers are 6" or 8" across 
GRACE TABOR 
done in the way of other plants, wide world 
over. The hundred-odd species and vari¬ 
eties which she has furnished are regarded 
by man as only a good beginning. 
But though crossing has been accom¬ 
plished hundreds of times, and seed has de¬ 
veloped from such crossings which, being 
sown, has duly sprouted and produced tiny 
lily plants unlike either of the parents in 
appearance and unlike each other, blossom¬ 
ing time brings only the same old flowers. 
Verily it is a mystery. 
Only one in all the long list of lilies is 
suspected of being a hybrid; and that is sus¬ 
pected only because it is not found wild any¬ 
where in the world, while all the others are. 
Not being able to locate the place of its na¬ 
tivity, botanists are driven to the suspicion 
that this old Nankeen lily —Lilium testa- 
ceum —may be a cross between the true Ma¬ 
donna lily of southern Europe and Lilium 
Chalcedonicum of Greece. 
Different True Forms 
Most familiar of all forms, because we 
all know it in the common tiger lily of old 
dooryards, is the “Turk's cap”—literally 
just that. In this form the petals, or peri¬ 
anth segments, as they call them in lilies, 
are curved or rolled back until their tips 
almost touch the base of the flower where 
it joins the stem. In some species the even¬ 
ness of this rolling back or recurving is 
quite remarkable, while in others it is no¬ 
ticeably irregular. The tiger lily is one of 
the latter, its segments frequently showing a 
twist as well as the recurve. 
The plant which everyone knows as the 
Easter lily in this part of the world, but 
which is not the true Madonna lily at all, 
is probably the next best known lily; and it 
may stand as the representative of the next 
form—the funnel or trumpet shaped. In 
this the segments curve outward from the 
rather long tube of the flower, but do not 
recurve so decidedly, though in some they 
do a little. The flowers, however, are dis¬ 
tinctly like a trumpet when analyzed. 
The two remaining forms are practically 
only one, the difference being in the way the 
flowers hang on their stems rather than in 
their shape. Spreading and but very slightly 
outward curving, their segments are formed 
Nearly pure white, L. speciosum, var. al¬ 
bum, is a strikingly handsome lily, though 
less thrifty than the red form 
