[OUR LILY GARDEN.]
PRACTICAL AIDS TO THE CULTURE OF LILIES.
By CHARLES PETERS.
What garden is complete without the good old tiger-lily? Other lilies are finer and more graceful, no doubt, but the old-fashioned tiger-lily will always hold its own in the struggle for popularity.
Although we call it an old-fashioned flower, it has not been grown in England for so very long, being unknown before this century. It made a bit of a stir, too, when it first blossomed in England. And no wonder that it did, when we see what a grand sight a bed of these lilies really is.
Lilium Tigrinum is a native of China, but it has long been cultivated in Japan, and it is from the latter country that we obtain most of our foreign bulbs.
A curious fact, which we have frequently noticed in connection with this lily, is that the size of the annual portion of the plant seems to bear no relation to the size of the bulb. In most lilies large bulbs produce fine plants, though we have seen that this is by no means always the case. But with L. Tigrinum the shoot apparently bears no relation whatever to the size of the bulb. If planted in very good soil, all the bulbs of L. Tigrinum seem to do equally well; whereas in an unsuitable soil all seem to fare equally poorly.
The bulbs are heavy and white, with the scales very dense and closely packed.
In growth this lily resembles L. Auratum in some respects, and the members of the Isolirion group in others. The leaves are very green and glossy, and are present in larger numbers than is commonly the case with lilies.
L. Tigrinum is one of the two lilies which constantly bear bulblets in the axils of their leaves. We have seen that under certain circumstances several of the other lilies produce these aërial bulblets, but the tiger-lily invariably does so. The bulblets are deep glossy purple in colour, and are often produced in great numbers. If planted as soon as they are ripe, they will grow freely and produce flowering spikes in their second or third year.