Odd you would bring up B&D Lilies.
I was noticing how their inventory had change since I started buying from them in the 80's.
I rarely go to their site because its such a short peek.

Roosterlorn said:\ I believe the independant, family owned growers/sellers will benefit as well as more and more of the newly deeply involved/interested come aboard for Species, Marts, Trumpets, Aurelians, etc. Mass production/mass marketing will never be able to accomodate this sector (those like us)

Forgot to say, I do agree with that, too.

Rick--
I just hope whatever happens, it doesn't end up a mess like Division VIII. Actually, as far as what you and I do, when one thinks about it, we've got it pretty good right now; living our hobbies in our own semi-secluded, semi-private little world without all that unnecessay confusion of twenty same cultivar look-alikes, ala, Stargazer, etc.

Lorn: thank gawd for your "look alikes" statement.
I am new to plants period and was befuddled by look alikes.
I find them in Iris too but just figured there must be some weeeeeenie detail I was missing that separated one bloom from another.

Here are photos of my Ariadne that bloomed here in Arcata, California (zone 9b)




They bloomed around June 26, 2012.

Nice tosee.

Thanks for posting the photos of Ariadne, nice to see how they look in other folks gardens.

Just curious about the statement made above by Roosterlorn:
I just hope whatever happens, it doesn't end up a mess like Division VIII

Could you explain?

My thinking is the the various subdivisions of Division VIII are already overpopulated with cultivars of L x A, L x O, O x T, O x A, T x L, A xA , etc. Now, let's suppose we go even further and we get a cross ( O x T ) x ( L x A ). And what if one of those 'O's is one of any one of the twenty plus variations of Stargazers out there? Will we be moving so far away from the original parentage that we really don't know what we have? And will we be moving so far away from the original ancestry of lilium with all it's survival and stamina traits it developed thru milliniums of evolution that it will be lost? Or could this become like the world of Hostas? I just hope that Division VIII doesn't turn into a dumping ground for something that-- let's just say, just doesn't fit anywhere else, so let's see, let's just stick it in Division VIII and call it 'Something New'.

I would like to hear yours and others thoughts on the future of Division VIII. My lily growing is pretty much central to Division VI and its ancestry.

I feel the same way; it has gotten full with such a variety of crosses that saying that something is Div. VIII still doesn't give you any idea what it is.

In all probability, you probably don't know what you are getting now. Yes, Division 8 has become a dumping ground for the crosses between divisions. But I do note, that some of the interdivisional are far superior to their species origins. Strong stems. larger flowers. They make for better cut flowers and garden plants. There is room for both the purist and the backyard gardener and the cur flower trade.

Pretty as the dickens too! Most that I've have or had seem to be quite desease resistant as well. And the LA's multiply quickly.and colonize well. Another thing I'm noticing more and more is that many of the Div. VIII cultivars are not all that climate zone sensitive. Heck, many of these are now grown from central Florida to Alaska by good,caring gardeners.

What will be interesting will be which select few cultivars of today will emerge and still be around 50 years from now. Any Guesses?

Roosterlorn said:.
What will be interesting will be which select few cultivars of today will emerge and still be around 50 years from now. Any Guesses?

Indeed. The North Star Lily Society (Minnesota) estimates there are around 200 cultivars bred in Minnesota. The have about 80 something planted in Arneson Acres Park (Minneapolis) that will be on the tour for the 2014 NALS convention. Still searching for more....

Rick, do you know if are they a mix of clones and strains or are they all clones? (those in Arneson Park). It would be interesting to note the clones of the earliest cultivars with the longest survivability thru time (indicating a high degree of desease and virus resistance). In other words: if a hybrid from the early 1960's is still being cloned today, it must be pretty darn desease resistant!

I guess if one clones often enough it might be possible to outrun or stay ahead of deseases and viruses; so I've heard anyway. But, I would think that even with so many several successive scalings thru time, even those clones would become virused somewhere along the way.

Roosterlorn said:Rick, do you know if are they a mix of clones and strains or are they all clones? (those in Arneson Park).

I don't know for sure. I've never heard of any strains being developed in Minnesota, but I could be wrong. I'll shoot an email off to Forrest, our Prez. He seems to know about these things.

Outrunning diseases and viruses through cloning is done by meristem culture. The idea is that the new clones are propagated from the newest produced cells that have never had time to be infected by viruses or diseases that the donor plant hosts. How often a clone is propagated through traditional asexual methods, as far as I know, wouldn't have an effect on virus habitation. I do have a lot of unanswered questions about this, which I don't doubt have valid replies. I've just never followed up.

That persistent Lilium clones exist through many decades or even centuries certainly does demonstrate their remarkable resistance and/or tolerance to viruses.
The concept pops up in my mind often, most recently in a discussion on another forum site, and about crocuses. Crocus, as are many genera in the Liliaceae family, are susceptible to viruses. Did you know that the true saffron crocus is actually a sterile triploid? Yet it is recorded from early Roman times. Talk about staying power!

Well, it's certainly an interesting area for thought. I saw a show in the Discovery Channel a couple years ago about a large Holland farm (ing) on tulip breeding and growing. They never mentioned the name since it was more about modern day agriculture and global marketing; a massive, unbelieavible operation. But anyway, Laboratory functions played a big role in the program to emphasize the 'modern'. They demonstrated and illustrated tissue culture as a way to produce millions of bulbs of the same cultivar. They illustrated how they test tissue cultures for viruses, growing successive rapid cultures and checking them each time under a microscope until the samples were 'free' of virus. The term 'free' they qualified as 'undetectable' meaning it could no longer be detected under a microscope. But they further qualifed that by saying all it would take is one or two undetected virused cells in a sample and the whole batch of up to 20 million would eventually become virused again. So they then showed their cultivar batch retains they grow to monitor the quality of each batch shipped. I don't believe they said how many years they kept the sample retain plants.

The reason I dwell on this again now is, this Spring I was surprized to see that The Lily Nook up in Manatoba offered an old de Graaff cultivar, Anaconda, as a clone. Well, I already have a fine example of it, but since this was a clone, I bought a couple for pollenating and seeding. Then, I got to thinking, maybe this clone, the product of so many successive clones over the last 60 years, might be carrying one or more viruses--maybe a virus I don't have here. So I'm contemplating whether or not to plant it in quarentene and use it from there.

That's another reason why I buy few lilies in plant or bulb form, and prefer virus free seeds.

On the other hand, to assume that any lily garden is completely virus free (including my own) just because there are no symptoms, is folly, IMO.

Agree on that one!! That was Anaconda (above post) not Golden Splendor. I'll have to edit/correct.

I should mention to general readers that I always assume that most all of my lilies carry one virus and that many of my older established ones may even carry two viruses. It's the third additional and unsuspected virus that I'm concerned about. A lily can carry a virus and not show it in any way and even with two they may perform pretty good but add a third and you're in real trouble. Plants are just like people, catch a cold and you can still work and look OK, Add in the flu and pnuemonia you'll feel and look tough. Now add in Cancer brought on by that bodily stress and you're real trouble. So, weakened lily bulbs caused by viruses often succumbed to things like bulb rot, etc. Weakened lily plants (the cultivar) still can be saved through seed however, since the seed will not carry the virus(s) but then we call it a strain of the parent cultivar.

Edit Note Added March, 25th. My usage of the word 'strain' above in such a broad sense is somewhat misleading
and technically speaking, inaccurate. For a more precise difinition of 'strain', please refer to Leftwood's post of 3/24/13 and susequent posts that follow it
located in the 'sticky' Thread: Hybridizing Lilies, for a more thorough understanding.