Introduction to Common Lily Varieties and How to Grow Them
Nowadays many people have the hobby of growing flowers and plants in their leisure time, and flowers like lilies are very popular among gardening enthusiasts. Their place of origin is China, and there are more than 100 varieties. So below, the editor will introduce several common varieties in detail, and then explain their propagation methods.
I. What are the common lily varieties?
1. Tiger lily (Lilium lancifolium)
The tiger lily has many other names: juan dan, yellow lily, tiger-skin lily, pearl flower and so on. It has purple-black markings that closely resemble the stripes on a tiger's back. The plant grows relatively tall, and it can be used both as food and as medicine. Its flowers are orange or brick-yellow, with long petals that curl outward.
2. Easter lily (Lilium longiflorum)
The Easter lily, which has the rather stylish names Easter lily and trumpet lily, is a representative variety of flowering lily. Its flowers are pure white and flawless, opening horizontally. It is deeply loved by many people.
3. Morningstar lily (Lilium concolor)
It also has many names: shandan flower, coral lily, shandan dan, thin-leaf lily. This is mainly because its leaves are relatively thin and numerous, much like coral. When it blooms, the color is bright red with a glossy, beautiful sheen. The leaves are fairly scattered, mostly concentrated in the middle of the stem, and are linear, with nipple-like protrusions along the leaf edges.
4. Beautiful lily (Lilium speciosum)
The beautiful lily is also called the deer lily or bright red lily. Because its leaves are broad and sparse and grow opposite each other, it is also called the large-leaf lily. Its petals curl outward, and the flower color is white or pale red, with rose-colored patterns and spots distributed across the petals.
II. How are lilies propagated?
In the south, lilies are sown in autumn, overwinter in the soil, emerge in the following spring, and are harvested around the beginning of autumn. Apart from breeding with seeds, lilies are all planted using seed bulbs. Depending on the material used, seed bulbs can be cultivated from bulbils (small bulbs), scales, and aerial bulbils, among others.
1. Cultivating seed bulbs from aerial bulbils: For varieties that can produce aerial bulbils (such as the Yixing lily), harvest the bulbils when they mature in summer. Sow them in September-October of the same year, opening shallow furrows about 3 cm deep in the seedbed at intervals of 10-13 cm. Place one bulbil every 4-5 cm in the furrow. Rake the soil surface level, then cover with straw. Remove the straw cover when the seedlings emerge the following spring, and apply topdressing. After the leaves wither in autumn, dig up the bulbs; by then the bulbs are already 1-2 cm in diameter. Immediately set up another seedbed and plant them, with a row spacing of 33 cm and a plant spacing of 10-14 cm, covering with 6 cm of soil. After the seedlings emerge in the third year, fertilize and manage them so the seedlings grow vigorously. When digging them up in autumn, some of the bulbs can already serve as seed bulbs, while the smaller ones are grown for another year.
2. Cultivating seed bulbs from bulbils: For varieties that can produce bulbils (such as the Lanzhou lily), when harvesting, collect the bulbils from the soil while digging up the large bulbs, and grade them by size. Those with a horizontal diameter of 5 cm and a weight of 30 g or more can be used directly as seed bulbs; smaller bulbils that do not meet the standard can be sown and cultivated in the same way as aerial bulbils for two to three years until they reach the standard and can be used as seed bulbs.
3. Cultivating seed bulbs from scales: Wait until the bulbs are fully mature, then dig them up. Select plump ones free of pests and disease, and use a sharp knife to cut the scales off from the base, then immediately insert them into a seedbed covered with sandy loam. When inserting, place the base downward, with each scale 3 cm apart. Cover with fine sand about 6 cm thick. When the bed soil is dry, sprinkle water to keep it moist, but not too much, to prevent the scales from rotting. Keep the bed temperature at about 20°C. With autumn sowing in the south, after about half a month, rice-grain-sized bulb bodies form at the cut end of the lower part of the scales. In the following spring, one or two basal leaves grow, and after the leaves wither in autumn, dig them up and, according to bulb size, cultivate seed bulbs in the same way as the aerial bulbil method.
Alright, that is all the content the editor wanted to share with you today. Friends who have seen lilies probably know that this is a rather beautiful flower, very suitable for growing in pots at home. At present, the most common lilies are the several varieties above. If you want to grow them, you can first learn about their propagation methods. I hope this article can be of some help to everyone.
For wonderful pictures and text and popular comments about lily varieties and propagation, you may be interested in the following recommendations from Nongxun Net. Welcome to read them.
Agricultural products you may be interested in: High-quality lily seeds supplied nationwide