Lilium pardalinum, Kell. Lily Family.
Bulbs consisting of forking rhizomes, covered with small, erect imbricated scales; often forming matted masses. Stems.—Three to ten feet high. Leaves.—Usually whorled, with some scattered above and below; lanceolate; three to seven inches long. Flowers.—Few to many; long-pediceled. Perianth segments.—Six; two or three inches long; six to nine lines wide; strongly revolute; with orange base and reddish or scarlet tips; spotted or dotted with purple on the lower half. Stamens.—Six. Anthers versatile. Ovary.—Three-celled. Style club-shaped. Stigma capitate. Capsule.—Eighteen lines or more long.
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Hab.—The Coast Ranges and Sierras, from Santa Barbara County to British Columbia, and eastward.
No more magnificent sight could be imagined than a cañon-side covered with a mass of these red and gold blossoms nodding on their tall stems. The plants often grow in clumps and colonies of several hundred, and are always found in the rich soil of stream-banks or of wet, springy places. Most of us have been familiar with these spotted beauties from our childhood, with their delicately swinging anthers full of cinnamon-colored pollen.
A friend writing us from near Mt. Shasta, one July, said: "I wish you could have seen the grove of tiger-lilies we saw near the place where we rested and lunched. They sprang from a velvet bed of mosses and ferns, under the shadow of a great rock, that towered at least a hundred feet above them. Out of the rock sprang two streams of living water, ice-cold, which crossed the trail and dashed over a rock below. Upon one plant we counted twenty-five buds and blossoms, while a friend counted thirty-two upon another."
Under extraordinarily favorable conditions, this lily has been known to reach a height of ten feet.