Lilium superbum L.

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘This splendid native of North-America was introduced by Mr. Peter Collinson, from Pennsylvania, about the year 1738.  Michaux found it growing in moist grassy spots in Carolina.  Spontaneous specimens have seldom more than three flowers in a kind of umbel; but cultivated carefully, and kept in a moist shady border of bog-earth, it will rise to the height of five feet and produce a thyrse of from twelve to fifteen flowers.  Differs from L. Martagon in having a bulb as white as ivory, not of a reddish-yellow; in having narrower, linear-lanceolate, tender, not obovate-lanceolate subcorrugately veined harsh leaves; has also much shorter internodes.  The plant adduced by Linnaeus and all his successors from Miller’s work, by way of a synonym to this, is quite a distinct species, most probably the large yellow-spotted many-flowered variety of the European L. Pomponium; of this any one that attends to its description may easily convince himself.  Blooms in July and August; scentless; seeds freely and is easily propagated by the numerous offsets it produces; tolerably hardy; at least we never lost any in the severest winters by cold merely; the bulbs sometimes rot in very wet seasons.’  [BM t.936/1806].

‘This species grows to the height of six feet, and is a beautiful plant.  The colour of its flower, a light orange.’  [BF p.209/1840].  FS f.1014-1015/1855.  Redouteé L pl.103/1802-15.

History at Camden Park

Listed in all published catalogues [B.317/1843].  Received per ‘Sovereign’ February 1831.  [MP A2948].

Notes

Lilium superbum Thunb. (1784) = Lilium speciosum Thunb. which see.