One more of the Lilies, indispensable for loveliness, should be grown
wherever it is found possible. This is the Nankeen Lily (_L.
testaceum_). It is a flower as mysterious as it is beautiful. It is not
found wild, and is considered to be a hybrid between the White Lily and
the Scarlet Martagon. Whether it occurred naturally, or whether it was
the deliberate work of some unknown benefactor to horticulture, will now
never be known; we can only be thankful that by some happy agency we
have this Lily of mixed parentage, one of the most beautiful in
cultivation. The name Nankeen Lily nearly, but not exactly, describes
its colour, for a suspicion of pinkish warmth is added to the tender
buff-colour usually so named.
Many other Lilies may be grown in different gardens, but the tenderer
kinds from Eastern Asia are not for the hardy flower-border, and the
vigorous American species have not yet been with us long enough to be
familiar as flowers of old English gardens.
A July garden would not show its true character without some masses of
the stately blue perennial Larkspurs. No garden plant has been more
widely cultivated within the last fifty years, and our nurserymen have
produced a large range of beautiful varieties. They have, perhaps, gone
a little too far in some directions. The desire to produce something
that can be called a novelty often makes growers forget that what is
wanted is the thing that is most beautiful, rather than something merely
exceptionally abnormal, to be gaped at in wonderment for perhaps one
season, and above all for the purpose of being blazoned forth in the
trade list. The true points to look for in these grand flowers are pure
colour, whether light, medium or dark, fine stature and a well-filled
but not overcrowded spike. There are some pretty double flowers, where
the individual bloom loses its normal shape and becomes flattened, but
the single is the truer form. They are so easily raised from seed that
good varieties may be grown at home, when, if space may be allowed for a
line of seedlings in the trial-ground, it is pleasant to watch what they
will bring forth. Such a good old kind as the one named “Cantab” is a
capital seed-bearer, and will give many handsome plants. They must be
carefully observed at flowering time, and any of poor or weedy habit in
their bloom thrown away. Some will probably have interrupted spikes,
that is to say, the spike will have some flowers below and then a bare
interval, with more flowers above. This is a fault that should not be
tolerated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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