This lily is more often grown in pots than in the ground. In this case do not put three large bulbs into one small pot, as is so often done. The lilies must starve in such a prison, and though they may flower one year, they will not do so again.
You must grow lilies in large pots. It is often said that bulbs are smaller when they have grown a year in pots than they were when first planted. This is not true if plenty of room be given to the bulb to develop. It is only true when two or three bulbs have been cramped in a small pot not sufficiently large to grow one bulb properly. Our Longiflorum bulbs grown in pots increase in size and produce numerous small bulblets.
It is unfortunately true that whether grown in pots or in the ground, L. Longiflorum tends to degenerate. It blossoms well the first year, produces a wretched show the second year, and after that it fails to come up at all.
Now we think that the reasons for this are not beyond our powers to grapple with. In the first place the hardier varieties should be chosen. L. Harrisii always dwindles because it is a tropical plant and will not grow in our cold clime. In the second place the bulbs should be dug up every second year, separated, and replanted in fresh soil.
After all, it is no great matter if this lily will not flower more than twice, for the bulbs are exceedingly cheap and readily procurable.
Last year we obtained some bulbs of a species of lily much resembling L. Longiflorum, from the island of Formosa. We planted one in a pot and the rest in the ground.
Unfortunately the former came to nothing, and as our garden is so full of lilies, we were rather at a loss to identify some species. One spike which we came to the conclusion belonged to this species was intermediate in form between the Takesima variety of L. Longiflorum and L. Philippinense, but its blossoms were smaller than those of either. If this is the true L. Formosanum, it is certainly but a variety of L. Longiflorum, and not a distinct species.
On the mountain slopes of the north of the Philippine Islands is found a lily of very great beauty and elegance. It has not long been cultivated in England, and even at the present day it is exceedingly rarely seen in this country. We have never possessed this lily; indeed we have only once seen it in flower, but the sight of it was sufficient to engender a determination to possess it at the earliest possibility.
L. Philippinense is a low-growing lily, barely exceeding a foot in height. It never, to our knowledge, bears more than a solitary blossom, but that one blossom is so fine that its beauty makes ample recompense for the paucity of flowers.
The flower resembles that of L. Longiflorum, but is much longer and more tube-like. The specimen that we saw was eleven inches long. It is a very pale greenish-white, the apex of the tube being yellow. The petals are about an inch and a half longer than the sepals, and both petals and sepals are equally re-curved.