The lilies which we have considered so far are all remarkable for the elegance of their forms and the striking colours of their flowers. If the reader has dreamed that all lilies are equally beautiful, or, at all events, that all are of great beauty and elegance, we are sorry to have to awaken him to the sad reality that there are many lilies which are not beautiful in colour and which are extremely inelegant in form.
The next group of lilies, Isolirion, contains many species, in all of which the flowers are erect and the segments little if at all reflexed. They are of low growth, and the blossoms are mostly orange in colour.
This group of lilies contains many old garden favourites which, though they possess but little individual beauty, are yet pleasing in the flower bed from the brightness and size of their blossoms, and for the early period at which they flower.
There is a great sameness about the members of the group Isolirion, and as there are many garden varieties of most of the species, some of which are possibly hybrids, it is a most difficult task to separate the various species from one another.
We associate the lily with elegance. What, then, should we imagine Lilium Elegans, the elegant lily to be like? And what is the reality? A low-growing clumsy stalk bearing two or three top-heavy enormous blossoms sticking bolt upright, chiefly of crude colours! As inelegant a plant as it is possible to conceive, having about as much right to the title of elegans as has the hippopotamus! Where did this lily get its name from? It has another title, Lilium Thunbergianum, or Thunberg’s lily. Which of these names shall we use? Which is the less objectionable? The name which records the chief characteristic which the plant lacks, or that concocted of a Latinised version of the name of a human being? Formerly this lily was called Lilium Lancifolium, or the lance-leafed lily, a name which, though it might be equally well applied to nearly every known species of lily, is yet better than either of its modern names. But we cannot use this name, for florists will persist in applying the name Lancifolium to L. Speciosum.
L. Elegans grows about a foot high, and each stem bears from one to four blossoms. The blossoms are very large, very inelegant, and short-lived. But they make up to a certain extent in colour what they lack in form.
There are innumerable varieties of L. Elegans, differing chiefly in the colour of the flowers. Some of the colours are very fine, others are harsh and crude.
We append a table of the colours of the best known varieties. An asterisk is placed before the most desirable forms.
L. Elegans produces both a double and a semi-double variety. We should have thought that a “semi-double” flower was the same as a single one. But it is not so. A semi-double equals a one-and-a-half blossom! That is, a double corolla of which the inner part is abortive.
Lilium Croceum. The old orange lily resembles Lilium Elegans, but it grows taller, and produces a far larger number of blossoms. This is the finest of the upright orange lilies. The blossoms are large and reddish-orange in colour, spotted with black. The plant grows to about three feet high, and is very showy.