is exported under that name. It was in the cottage gardens that I saw the finest lilies, and many a giant bearing from twenty to thirty unblemished blooms, at the top of a stem some six or seven feet high, clad with equally unblemished foliage, was brought to me, as it soon became known that the “foreigner” staying at Atami had come especially to see their yuri no hana. Not that the Japanese seem ever especially to admire them, and they are not included among their “seven beautiful flowers of late summer.” Mr. Parsons gives an example of this fact:—
I was walking one day at Yoshida with a Japanese artist, a remarkable man, who was engaged in making a series of steel engravings, half landscape, half map, of the country round Fuji, and called his attention to a splendid clump of belladonna lilies growing near an old grey tomb; but he would not have them at all, said they were foolish flowers, and the only reason he gave me for not liking them was because they came up without any leaves. When we got back to our tea-house he took my pen and paper and showed me what were the seven beautiful flowers of late summer: the convolvulus, the name of which in Japanese is “asago,” meaning the same as our “morning glory”; wild chrysanthemum; yellow valerian; the lespedeza, a kind of bush clover; Platycodon grandiflorum and purple blue campanula; Eulalia japonica, the tall grass which covers so many of the hills; and shion, a rather insignificant aster. I noticed that some versions of the seven flowers differed from his; a large flowered mallow is often substituted for the last he named. There are doubtless different schools which hold strong views on the subject, but on the “morning glory” and some others they are evidently agreed.
The tiger lilies were in bloom in the village gardens, but never in any great number—a clump here and there, for they are seldom allowed to bloom, it is for their bulbs they are cultivated; this is their “edible lily,” and young bulbs of Lilium tigrinum are among their most prized vegetables. I had noticed a square bed of these lilies suggestive of an asparagus bed, in a priest’s garden in Kyoto in May, and thought what a wealth of colour they would provide later in the year; but next time I saw the garden, early in June it may have been, the lilies had all been executed—just their heads cut off,—and when I expressed amazement and regret I was told that this was always done to strengthen the bulb. The variety did not seem to be as fine as those grown under the name of Tigrinum Fortunii in England, and yet more robust and with larger heads than our common tiger lily; probably the different soil and damper climate would account for this.
The apricot-coloured Lilium Batemanni seemed to know how to protect their bulbs from the hand
LILIES ON THE ROCKS, ATAMI
of the collector, for jutting out between the rocks, hanging perhaps a hundred feet above the sea, these lilies grow, tantalising to those who want to pick them, for these rocks are not easy to climb; but how beautiful they are, their clear colour standing out against the grey cliffs and the restless deep blue sea below.
The cultivation of lilies for exporting seems to have developed into quite an important industry in Japan of late years; the district round Kamakura and right away to Yumoto appeared to be the best soil for their culture. I never saw any Lilium longiflorum in their wild state, but thousands, I should think millions, of bulbs of this lily are exported annually, in all its different forms. For indoor growing the variety known as Harrisii seems still to be the favourite; though giganteum is a stronger form, and certainly is to be preferred for the open ground. Multiflorum is for the impatient grower, as it flowers some three weeks earlier, though it is a more slender kind; and there are many others. Even in Japan the dreaded disease among Lilium auratum seemed to be not unknown; apparently cultivation brings it in its train, as in fields and gardens I noticed occasionally the fatal yellow leaves, which means death to the bulb; and the other form of disease known as “clubbing” may occur, even when the lilies are growing in their natural state—the two stems grown into one, and the monster head so closely packed with blossoms that none can develop to their full size or beauty; on one head alone I counted over a hundred blooms, but the effect was only that of a poor deformity.