{"id":180,"date":"2009-11-16T05:33:38","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T13:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=180"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"regal-lilies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/regal-lilies\/","title":{"rendered":"Regal Lilies"},"content":{"rendered":"

REGAL LILIES<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have a friend who grows exquisite trumpet lilies.\u00a0 It goes without saying that she has a green thumb, but she also has a raised, south-facing bed with perfect drainage.\u00a0 There are no deer in her area to eat the plants, so they don’t have to be fenced or sprayed with noxious deer repellant.\u00a0 The lilies grow–and grow and grow and grow–eventually reaching five or six feet tall with huge trumpets.\u00a0 They are the envy of the neighborhood.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I aim to grow trumpet lilies like that–but not just any lilies.\u00a0 Next summer I expect my garden to be home to several Lilium regale or regal lilies.\u00a0 The golden-throated regals have the trumpet shape of a large Easter lily.\u00a0 The inside of each petal is white, but the outside is ribbed and brushed with distinctive burgundy and rose markings. Hyperbole is rampant in the world of horticulture, but I think it is not an overstatement to say that the scent of even one mature regal lily is intoxicating.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Despite claims that the regals are easy to grow, I have had only middling results with them in the past.\u00a0 This was because I either bought inferior bulbs or planted those bulbs in less than optimal conditions.\u00a0 In any event, when I gazed covetously at my friend’s lilies at the end of last summer I was ready to make amends and try again.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I considered where to put them and had several possible sites in mind, but none that seemed optimal.\u00a0 My most successful garden lilies are a large clump of ‘Black Beauty’, a raspberry-flowered, Turk’s cap type introduced to commerce 1957 and to my garden about four years ago.\u00a0 The clump grows larger and more beautiful every summer and I was not about to tempt fate by moving it to make room for my regals.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then one day, as I was weeding an established iris bed, I was struck by something so obvious that I wondered how I could have overlooked it for so long.\u00a0 My iris were growing in a south-facing, raised bed with impeccable drainage.\u00a0 Sun shone down on them for many hours every day.\u00a0 The site was perfect for regal lilies.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At summer’s end I ordered several regal bulbs from a first rate supplier.\u00a0 While I waited for the shipment, I relocated the iris.\u00a0 The rhizomes needed dividing anyway and I put them in another spot that would not have been congenial to lilies, but would work perfectly well for iris.\u00a0 I planted my three large regal bulbs shortly after they arrived a few weeks ago and now the only thing left to do is wait and hope that my results will rival those of my friend.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Regals are as renowned for their provenance as their beauty.\u00a0 The species is native to western China’s Szechwan province.\u00a0 The lilies were among over 1,000 new species discovered at the turn of the twentieth century by Ernest H. Wilson (1876-1930), one of the greatest plant hunters of all time.\u00a0 Wilson, who was English by birth, trained as a botanist and first visited China on behalf of a renowned English nursery, James Veitch and Son.\u00a0 Subsequent trips were underwritten by Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and the many Asian expeditions earned Wilson the nickname “Chinese”\u009d Wilson.\u00a0\u00a0 Shortly after discovering Lilium regale and arranging to lift and ship many dormant bulbs back to the United States, Wilson was caught in a landslide, sustaining a serious leg fracture.\u00a0 The bone was set by a local mission doctor, saving the botanist from an amputation, but resulting in a limp that stayed with him for the rest of his life.\u00a0 Some sources say that he referred to this affliction his “lily limp.”\u009d\u00a0 After six expeditions to sometimes wild and dangerous parts of the Far East, Wilson became director of the Arnold Arboretum.\u00a0 Ironically the intrepid botanist and his wife were killed in a Massachusetts car crash in 1930. \u00a0Fortunately for the horticultural world, Wilson’s many discoveries lived after him.\u00a0 Regal lilies, for example, remain popular on their own and have also been used to breed all kinds of trumpet-type varieties.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So why think about regal lilies now, when it’s too late to order or plant them?\u00a0 Because they are so beautiful and distinctive that no garden should be without them.\u00a0 Make a note to yourself to try them next year.\u00a0\u00a0 And even if you really don’t want regal lilies, the end of the growing season is a great time to take stock of the plants that inhabit your garden space.\u00a0 If there is something that you have been longing to grow, chances are you can find a space for it.\u00a0 All you have to do is look around you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

REGAL LILIES \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have a friend who grows exquisite trumpet lilies.\u00a0 It goes without saying that she has a green thumb, but she also has a raised, south-facing bed with perfect drainage.\u00a0 There are no deer in her area to eat the plants, so they don’t have to be fenced or sprayed with noxious … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}