Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Plant Identification => Plant Identification Questions and Answers => Topic started by: pontus on December 15, 2013, 11:49:19 PM
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7 years ago I got a bulb of lilium michiganense from the UK. The bulb grew, but then desintegrated and rotted..left where a few tiny scales on which minuscule rice grain bulblets had formed.
I rescued these and patiently fed them and grew them on in pots...as the years passed, they grew larger and larger every year. When almost bursting the pot, I depotted them and planted them out in a border, where i kept feeding them to build size, hoping every year for the first flower of this superb sp...
this summer, i was extremely excited, as the largest bulb produced its first bud. In anticipation i saw it colour, and was overexcited when it began opening!
but my excitment was quicklly tuned down as i discovered that the flower, in my opinion, looked much more like lilium pardalinum than michiganense....
It flowered 2 weeks or so later than my pardalinums. What is strange is that the leaves seem intermediate between pardalinum and michiganense..more pointed and almost in an upright whorl, while my pardalinums tend to have more rounded leaves which drop down a bit in their whorls up the stem.
what do you think? is this simply a form of pardalinum?
Pontus
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I think it is pardalinum. I will post some photos later. Do you have a photo of the foliage?
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If you could see a mature bulb, it would be easy to tell. L. pardalinum exhibits rhizomatous bulbs and is considered to be a transition species between concentric bulb growth and stoloniferous bulb growth. See here:
http://www.manitobalilies.ca/Articles/Novice/Lilium%20Bulbs.htm (http://www.manitobalilies.ca/Articles/Novice/Lilium%20Bulbs.htm)
Lilium michiganense (see last post)
http://allthingsplants.com/thread/view/4020/Species-Lily-Bulbs/ (http://allthingsplants.com/thread/view/4020/Species-Lily-Bulbs/)
Your flower looks like pardalinum to me, also.
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L. superbum:
[attach=1]
L. pardalinum:
[attach=2]
L. michiganense:
[attach=3]
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yes that is what I thought, that michiganense had a bulb which was closer to superbum and canadense..and not really a rhizomateous bulb like pardalinum...this bulb is clearly rhizomateous...
I found an image of the plants in leaf, but I have cropped it from a larger wide shot of the border, so the image may be a bit small...in real life the leaves are a bit darker green in colour than they appear on the photograph
Pontus