Plant early so lilies can warm their feet before frosts arrive

Press, 1 May 1981, Page 11

Plant early so lilies can warm their feet before frosts arrive

[OrDENER’S ® DIARY

Derrick Rooney

Lilies have been in the forefront of my thinking in the' garden this week, because this is lily-planting time, April is the month when many lily growers send out their orders.

I used to plant out my lilies much later, but my thinking has changed, and now I insist on getting them into their permanent quarters while the ground is still warm.

I think it was the broad beans that influenced me.

Anzac Day is traditionally the day in which gardeners in our district sow their broad beans. It is also a deadline: plant them any earlier, and they may bolt; leave them any later, and you run the risk of failing to get germination before winter, and a consequently slower getaway for the young plants when spring comes.

The factors which guarantee good establishment for Anzac Day beans apply to .lilies, too. The bulbs are going dormant, but still have a bit of kick in them, and the soil is still warm enough to let them take a good roothold before the hard frosts hit.

I didn’t quite make the Anzac Day deadline this year, but I had all the newcomers, mostly Aurelian and Asiatic hybrids, and a few’ Americans descended from the Bellingham group, in the ground a day or two afterwards. Lilium wallichianum, a late-flowering Himalayan species that dies down almost immediately after the last flower fades, has been safely lifted .and .transplanted to a new site; L. tsingauense has been inspected, and left alone; a group of hybrid yellow trumpet lilies, due for replanting, has been left alone because the bulbs had burrowed so deep into the ground that I could not get them out without dismantling an entire border.

Still to be checked and given fresh soil is my favourite, Lilium longiflorum. This species has been in cultivation in Europe since the eighteenth century, and in England since the nineteenth century; in Japan and China it has been a garden plant perhaps for millenia. It is a Japanese native, a

fairly rare one, occurring as a wild plant on the islands of the Ryukyu archipelago, south of Japan, and nowhere else.

The bulb of this lily is roundish, and whitish, with many narrow, pointed scales. It is a stem-rooting type, i.e. it grows a wadge of fibrous roots from the stem above the bulb as well as the normal fleshy roots below it, and must thus be planted several inches deep.

Collectors’ notes describe the wild plants as growing 30cm to lm high, but in cultivation the stems are much taller, up to 2m, topped by one or several large flowers. The stems are not thick, but are strong enough to stand up without staking, and are very leafy, with a shining, finish. Even when out of flower it is a handsome plant, but as with all lilies the main attraction lies in the flowers, which are pure, unadorned white, and sweetly scented without being in any way cloying. Their shape is that of a fat funnel, and their popular name in Japan is “tempoyuri,” which translatesloosely, I believe, as “blunderbuss lily.”

There are numerous varieties, some with botanical names and some with nonbotanical ones, such as “Creole,” “Estate,” “Shangri-La,” or “Dutch Glory,” but all are selections from plants in cultivation.

Lilium longiflorum in the wild does not vary much, and even in cultivation it does not seem to hybridise read-

ily, so it has thus played a very small part in the devel--5i opment of modern hybrid ft lilies. But over the years it has F probably been commercially > the most important lily in ’ the world, and it says a great deal for its vigour and adaptability that, despite the limited genetic material available, growers have been able to spread it so widely and select so many good . forms from it. Huge numbers are grown annually as pot plants, or for cut flowers, in warm countries, where Lilium longiflorum is a grower’s dream lily because full-size flowering bulbs can be raised from seed in six months.

It is not very hardy, and in the colder Northern Hemisphere countries it is strictly a greenhouse plant. Even in New Zealand it needs a warm spot, and I must confess that my bulbs have never actually been out in the garden; they live in a pot on the terrace because I like them there. They are very little trouble. I feed them now and then, repot them every couple of years (they are due now), water them year-round and occasionally, when spraying the roses, give them a swish of insecticide to keep the bugs away. Given normal circumstances, they flower in December, but it is possible, by

decapitating the shoots at an early stage, to persuade them to come on much later — as late as March, when their fragrant flowers are more welcome and better appreciated. They get the same potting mix as all my other plants: pine bark (which I am trying as a cheaper substitute for peat), soil in which the hens have been scratching, and sand in equal parts, plus nutrients.

Since I read that the botanist, E. H. “Chinese” Wilson, found them growing in limestone among coral outcrops near the edge of the sea in Okinawa, I have been adding extra dolomite to their mix, too, and while I have no proof that they are any the better for it, it is certainly doing them no harm. I suppose they would grow just as well, maybe even better, if I planted them out in the garden, but as they seem happy in their pot I see no reason to uproot them. As pot plants, grown in a Erotected environment, they ave the additional charm of unpredictability. Because they come originally from an insular climate in which the winters are either very mild or non-existent (Okinawa is at roughly the same latitude as Brisbane) they have no sense of seasons.

If they flower early in summer the bulbs can split up and rejuvenate so rapidly that more flowering stems are pushing up by autumn. We had this happen last winter, when we were able to bring a couple of stems indoors to flower in June. But that was a nerve-wrack-ing race against frost, and I would not care to repeat it.