A few more Aurelians from @vanozzi:



What is probably 'Red Velvet' (bought it as 'Lanzarote', which it definitely isn't):

Local wildlife enjoying the Aurelians:


A couple more of Paul's hybrids:

You did some crosses.

Indeed I did, Luka! Since I found that I have two of these bulbs, I thought I'd risk making two pollinations on this one. The left bloom is crossed with 'Tall Boy' and the right with the purple trumpet seedling I recently flowered.

Joshua, I love that curly golden trumpet.

@Australis @pardalinum @magnolialover
Remember a few weeks ago when I said that lilium lijiangense changed its name to lilium tenii? For some reason CoL (which our database uses) still holds the name lilium lijiangense while some other databases (like Kew) have lilium tenii. Also, some known hybrids of two species of lilies (such as lilium x aurelianense or lilium x testaceum) are listed in CoL as true species of lilies, which is not true because none of these hybrids were created naturally but by human activity (but well, in our database are they labeled as hybrids which is good).
If we are going to follow CoL then you need to make a small change regarding the lilium ponticum. The two ponticum variations (var. artivinense and var. ponticum) are separated as recognized variations in CoL while they are not present in our database at all and are treated as synonyms of lilium ponticum.
Another thing I would like to emphasize is the lilium elegans in our database. There are 2 Lilium "elegans" in literature. One was by Thunberg and published as species (L. elegans) and one by Ware (L. x elegans) as a hybrid between "dahuricum" x "elegans brevifolium". The notation would suggest it was a natural hybrid BUT Ware in Gartenflora speaks of "gezuchtet" which is German for bred, so man-made. Brevifolium means "short leaved". We should then rename it in our database as lilium x elegans (like we do with any other species x species lily).

Thanks Luka. I'll look into it when I get a chance.

Merry Christmas everyone!

A couple points in nomenclature, Luka:

1. It is acceptable under the rules of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) that a cross of two species can be designated with or without the multiplication sign (×).

Therefore Lilium ×testaceum could be the same as Lilium testaceum. This is because "testaceum" is recognized as the name given for all crosses of L. candidum and L. chalcedonicum. It is used as a shorthand for writing "L. candidum × L.chalcedonicum". Any botanist learned in the Lilium genus would just know that testaceum is not a species. Unfortunate for us, that we don't always "just know" automatically. Also unfortunately, different authors may use different rules of their own, and it can really get confusing.

The same could be said about Lilium ×elegans and Lilium elegans, or L. ×hollandicum and L. hollandicum.

2. To my knowledge, there is no way to designate whether a cross is naturally occurring or not. Hybrids can and do occur naturally, and are designated in the same way as basic human bred hybrids, unless a specific clone is named. A hybrid is not a true species just because it is naturally occurring.
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It has been proven by chromosome analysis that Lilium elegans is indeed a group of hybrids exclusively (or almost exclusively) involving L. dauricum and L. maculatum, and that the lily described by Thunberg was not a wild lily.







Personally, I don't think the data base here is at all an authoritative source, and as such, we ought to be congruent with one that is. We are fooling ourselves to think that we know better, or have better sources of information than an authoritative source. Changes in authoritative listings that reflect new or evolving data sets are never instant, and I would guess that the CoL will eventually list L. tennii as accepted. The paper you posted about tennii, Luka, has to be reviewed and verified. How do we know if that paper actually tells the truth? Leave the expertise up to the experts. Meanwhile, just realize that no one and no thing (like our data base) is perfect.

Rick is correct.

I can add that the COL is inconsistent regarding designating hybrid taxa with the multiplication sign (it seems to depend on the source dataset they use). In the case of KEW's World Checklist of Selected Plants, they don't seem to include the sign and rely on the entry itself to include any hybrid notes.

The other issue I've noted with the COL is that they don't distinguish between man-made and natural. Some of the early man-made hybrids received a botanical name in the form of Genus x nothospecies and these have been preserved in the KEW WCSP (and hence appear in the COL).

The COL actually relies on a large number of authoritative sources which it compiles together in one place. It doesn't update instantly, which is why KEW's WCSP (which is the upstream source for a number of genera such as the Orchid family and Liliums) will show updates first. It can take months to appear in the COL and COVID-19 this year has seriously delayed things, as has the COL moving to a new infrastructure.

Thanks Rick!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas to you all!

Merry Christmas to all my lily lovin' friends !
(summer of 2020)

Yesterday at Christmas the temperature here was 17 degrees Celsius. Incredibly. It's like it's spring, not winter. The climate has totally changed in recent years.

Merry Christmas all! Hope you all have a much better 2021!

I hope every had a great Christmas. I just have to show off one of my favorite gifts, a coffee cup with a stylized water color rendition of Stargazer. I love it!

Pretty cup, Connie.

Happy New Year to everyone!
I'll be watching for the 2021 thread.

Joshua and Anthony,
We watched the Sydney fireworks display yesterday, and DH and agreed it was the best either one of us have seen. We reached that conclusion halfway into it, and then it got even better with the stunning continuous firefall off the bridge. Australia!

Happy New Year.
May our gardens be fillled with loads of lily blooms in 2021.