Nth. Am. Lilium

Dirk Wallace dirkwallace@bigpond.com
Thu, 17 Jun 2004 14:37:48 PDT
Hi Mary Sue et al,

My success with North American Lilium species has been very limited, actually I have managed to kill them all :-(

I have raised the following from seed:- L. bolanderi, L. kelloggii (a few forms), L. washingtonianum, L. washingtonianum var. purpurescens, L. vollmeri, L. wigginsii, plus a couple more which escape me!

Lilium wigginsii is the only species that grew and flowered for me, they flowered two years in a row and then gave up the ghost. The other species grew quite well in the first year or two but declined from there on in until they were all gone. One of the L. kelloggii grew for 4 or 5 years and had a whorl of 6 or more leaves this past year, but I left them in a too dry and hot spot for a little too long, and lost this one as well. To my mind they do not want to dry out completely in summer, but I have managed to kill them all, so I can safely say I do not know :-)

Most of my failure occurred when I moved house out to Yackandandah where the summers are much cooler, and the winters are cold and damp for extended periods of time. The Lilium grew but never excelled in this climate.

With regards to raising seeds of these species - I raised all of these seeds in 5 or 6 inch pots with a medium consisting mainly of sand (varying grades from fine to coarse), but also added to that was a small percentage of "seed raising mix" which is basically pulverized de-composed bark, not much more than a few millimetres in diameter. I did not use any peat or loam in the medium. I hope this helps.


Hopefully all of these failures means that someone has had some success. Anyone!!!

Kind Regards,

Dirk

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