The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX. No. 1003, March 18, 1899Various
General
The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX. No. 1003, March 18, 1899
Various
Children's literature -- Periodicals
The depth of the colour of the exterior of the blossoms varies with the
amount of light in which the lily is grown. Specimens grown indoors
usually have a pure white exterior. The blossoms are very tender and
are often cankered by rain at the flowering time.
Both _L. Brownii_ and _L. Japonicum_ make admirable pot plants, and
their blossoms last a long time as cut flowers.
The variety of _L. Brownii_ called _Leucanthum_ lacks the brown
coloration of the blossoms. We cannot distinguish it from the ordinary
variety when grown indoors. There are several other so-called varieties.
All the lilies which we have described are natives of Asia, but now we
come to one which inhabits our own continent.
_Lilium Candidum_, the white, or Madonna, or St. Joseph’s Lily, is
unquestionably _the_ lily. And when we mention the lily, this is the
plant which is usually meant.
Common as this lily has been in English gardens for very many
centuries, it is not a native plant, and has very rarely escaped from
cultivation. We have only once seen this lily growing wild. This was
in a wood in Surrey, and it was probably a garden escape. There was
but one spike of blossoms in 1895 when we first saw it. Next year it
produced one solitary flower, but since that period it has entirely
disappeared.
Why this lily has never become wild in England is not very obvious,
for though it never seeds in our Island, it very rapidly increases by
off-sets formed round the bulbs, and hundreds of these must be thrown
away yearly.
Perhaps it is that the lily is not really hardy in our climate, and
though it will flourish when tended in the garden, it is unable to hold
its own in the strife with our native plants.
Where the white lily will grow, it is one of the loveliest of
garden plants. Always better where it has been long established and
undisturbed for years, it is in old gardens that this lily is seen in
perfection.
Unlike the lilies we have already considered, the _Lilium Candidum_
bears from four to thirty blossoms on each stem. It is true that one
very rarely sees an umbel of more than ten blossoms, but a plant
bearing only this number is a very marked feature in a garden.
This lily differs from every one of its colleagues in many points. Its
bulb which we figured in our first part is very characteristic. About
the end of October the white lily begins to throw up an autumn crop
of leaves. This alone marks it off from all other lilies, for though
one or two species do sometimes send up a stray leaf or two in autumn,
none of them do so regularly. But with _L. Candidum_ the autumn leaves
are never absent, and they remain green and fresh till long after the
flower shoot has appeared.
The flowers of the white lily are very different from those of _L.
Longiflorum_ and its allies. They are very short, widely-expanded and
very numerous. The pollen is yellow. The flowers have a pleasant though
rather strong perfume.
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