[OUR LILY GARDEN.]
PRACTICAL AIDS TO THE CULTURE OF LILIES.
By CHARLES PETERS.
lthough we have no true lily indigenous to our island, there is at least one species which has established itself in England, and by this time can claim to be called a British wild flower. This lily is the Martagon or Turk’s cap, a flower long cultivated in English gardens, and, after the Madonna lily, the most familiar of the whole genus.
The fifth group of lilies, the Martagons, is the most extensive of all. It includes over twenty species which differ widely from each other in most particulars. The usual description of the members of this group (“perianth cernuous, with the segments very revolute, stamens diverging on all sides”) is certainly applicable to all the Martagons, but it is equally so to the tiger-lily or L. Speciosum.
Most of the Martagons are remarkable rather for the number of their blossoms than for the size of the individual flowers. There are, however, many exceptions to this; Lilium Monadelphum bears blossoms in large numbers, but the individual flowers are large and showy. L. Medeoloides and L. Avenaceum bear but one or two blossoms of small size.
The prevailing colours of the flowers of the Martagons are yellow, orange and red. A few are purple, and one rare variety of the common Martagon is white.
In a former article we sub-divided this group of lilies into several smaller sections. We do not advance any scientific reason for so classifying them. The divisions are adopted merely for convenience of description.
The first of our sub-divisions is the group of lilies which we have called True Martagons. This group contains ten species. In all the members except one the bulb is perennial, and does not bear a rhizome. They are all natives of the Old World, being for the most part natives of Central Europe.