Lilium Candidum, the white, or Madonna, or St. Joseph’s Lily, is unquestionably the lily. And when we mention the lily, this is the plant which is usually meant.
Common as this lily has been in English gardens for very many centuries, it is not a native plant, and has very rarely escaped from cultivation. We have only once seen this lily growing wild. This was in a wood in Surrey, and it was probably a garden escape. There was but one spike of blossoms in 1895 when we first saw it. Next year it produced one solitary flower, but since that period it has entirely disappeared.
Why this lily has never become wild in England is not very obvious, for though it never seeds in our Island, it very rapidly increases by off-sets formed round the bulbs, and hundreds of these must be thrown away yearly.
Perhaps it is that the lily is not really hardy in our climate, and though it will flourish when tended in the garden, it is unable to hold its own in the strife with our native plants.
Where the white lily will grow, it is one of the loveliest of garden plants. Always better where it has been long established and undisturbed for years, it is in old gardens that this lily is seen in perfection.
Unlike the lilies we have already considered, the Lilium Candidum bears from four to thirty blossoms on each stem. It is true that one very rarely sees an umbel of more than ten blossoms, but a plant bearing only this number is a very marked feature in a garden.
This lily differs from every one of its colleagues in many points. Its bulb which we figured in our first part is very characteristic. About the end of October the white lily begins to throw up an autumn crop of leaves. This alone marks it off from all other lilies, for though one or two species do sometimes send up a stray leaf or two in autumn, none of them do so regularly. But with L. Candidum the autumn leaves are never absent, and they remain green and fresh till long after the flower shoot has appeared.
The flowers of the white lily are very different from those of L. Longiflorum and its allies. They are very short, widely-expanded and very numerous. The pollen is yellow. The flowers have a pleasant though rather strong perfume.
Though this plant has been grown for centuries in gardens, there are but few varieties of it.
One variety named Aureo-Marginatis has its leaves bordered with golden-yellow and the autumn growth looks very striking in winter.