A lily to ID?

[Maggi Young]

Peter Kohn wanted to post  a picture to seek an ID for this lily- I have resized the photo for him -


Peter wrote : I have been trying to post a query on the SRGC Forum. We had an unidentified Lily
at Kerrachar grown from SRGC seed nearly 20 years ago and despite extensive trawls of the net and our reference books we are still stuck.  .........we also have lost the original details of what we sowed but it was a time when one could ask for extra seeds of a genus after the main distribution so it may have been an obscure species which noone wanted !!  Personally I think it is really elegant and it was vigorous and stayed healthy.


Can you help please ?


Peter

[monocotman]

It looks very much like the species henryi or a close hybrid from it.

David

[Gene Mirro]

How about a photo of the throat of the flower, and of the seedpod?  Does it bloom early or late?

It looks like one of the yellowish forms of henryi.

[Maggi Young]

I hope Peter himself may be able to answer some of those questions about detail - I was only sent that one photo.

[P. Kohn]

I'm very happy with an identification of this plant as Lilium henryi. It is what I had vaguely remembered but my only way of checking was looking on internet images and these looked so different that I thought my memory was at fault. Are the very narrow petals of our plant typical ?  Are most of the internet images atypical or misidentified ?

[fermi de Sousa]

In my opinion yours looks more like an Aurelian Hybrid involving Lilium henryi. The more upright stature is inherited from its trumpet parent.
cheers
fermi

[P. Kohn]

The plant would have been seed-raised from the SRGC seed distribution so, assuming open pollination, a hybrid with L. henryi as a parent is clearly a possibility.

[johnw]

Fermi - I have to agree, I have never seen a L. henryi with stiffly upright stems like that.  They are always weakly arching over nearby low shrubs.

johnw  - +3c, grey.

[Rick R.]

The smaller and broader leaves on the stem as it reaches the first flower peduncle that is typical of the L. henryi species is not evident either.  This also indicates the trumpet lily influence.

[Dick Cheung]

it seems to be L. rosthornii

[P. Kohn]

Dick, Thanks for this suggestion. The match to the images of L. rosthornii seems pretty good.  Even without our original records, both Trish and I are sure we never raised plants from seed with this name but one is always dependent on the seed source being correctly identified. Does anyone else support this identification ?

[Susan Band]

I was also thinking rosthornii but what threw me was you said you got the seed 20years ago. At that time there weren't many plants of it about. If the plants are very upright growing then it is likely  L rosthornii.
Susan

[Gene Mirro]

I have lots of L. henryi that are upright.  Maybe the narrow petals are a clue.  They are much narrower than I have seen in henryi.  The flowers also seem to have the papillae that are characteristic of henryi.  L. rosthornii looks like a good possibility:  http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/LiliumAsiaticSectionFour .

[Rick R.]

Scratch what I said before.  I was looking at the wrong stems in the pic!

[gote]

Rosthornii 98% sure.
Check the leaves against flora of China on the net.
Rosthornii was (is?) a food crop in Cina so it could easiy have been imported nameless by a casual visitor.
Happy New year
Göte