Cardiocrinum giganteum Makino

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘The discovery of this Prince of Lilies, we owe, as we do so much of Indian and especially northern Indian botanical novelty, to Dr. Wallich, who detected it in moist shady places on Sheopore in Nepal.  “This majestic Lily,” writes Dr. Wallich, “grows sometimes to a size which is quite astonishing; a fruit-bearing specimen of the whole plant, which is destined for the Museum of the Hon. East India Company, measures full ten feet from the base of the stem to its apex.  The flowers are proportionably large and delightfully fragrant, not unlike those of the common white Lily.”  Nor does it degenerate in cultivation; witness the specimen from which our drawing was made, a portion of which was obligingly communicated to us through Dr. Balfour, by the Messrs. Cunningham, Comely Bank Nursery, Edinburgh, in July, 1852, accompanied by a full-length representation made on the spot.  These showed the flowering plant to have attained a height of ten feet in one season; the flower portion occupying twenty inches.  Such a raceme of flowers, accompanied by leaves measuring ten to twelve inches long and eight inches broad, must have afforded a striking spectacle, and which has only yet been witnessed at the nursery just mentioned, where the plant was raised from seeds sent by Major Madden some five or six years ago; but it has only now for the first time blossomed in Europe.  The bulb was treated in the ordinary way without heat.  Baron Hugel found the plant in the Peer Punjiil pass of the Himalaya, leading into Kashmeer; and we believe that Drs. Thomson and Hooker met with it abundantly in other portions of that vast range of hills.’  [BM t.4673/1852].

Introduced to Britain in 1852.  [JD].

History at Camden Park

The only reference to this plant is a handwritten entry in a copy of the 1850 catalogue held at the Mitchell Library, inscribed on the front Wm. Macarthur, 23rd Dec. 1854.  [ML 635.9m].  It is possible that Macarthur obtained his plants directly from India.  Camden Park was supplying horses directly to the Indian army at this time.

Notes