The other 2 seedlings will not bloom this year.

Lilium duchartrei (corrected from taliense) in her glory!






A nicely folded Turks cap with a light, clean scent. Nice green nectaries and beautiful marbling.

Gosh, isn't that stunning, Joe! I am still overjoyed when any of this lily group opens in my garden.

But it is doubtful that that is L. taliense. I would ID it as L. duchartrei. L. taliense nectaries (the center of the petals going into the center of the flower) should be smooth (not papillose). In addition, L. taliense leaves should be single veined, not 3-5 veined as in your pic. overall coloring of the flower is less important.
Lilium taliense
Lilium duchartrei
Chinese Lilium key
Pics from Bjornar Olsen (the Norwegian plant hunter living in Chengdu, China)
Lilium taliense


Personally, I think L. duchartrei is more elegant.

Damn Rick! I believe you maybe right! The link you provided shows similar flowers. It is slightly pappilose, and the nectary is green as opposed to black streaked. The description also describes white hairs in the axils for duchartrei. The leaves mostly look one veined to me. It was sold as taliense. Oh well this is beautiful anyway. There is one in a pot outside that is growing one bud. I wonder if it will have the pinkish tinge that duchartrei sometimes has due to the cooler weather? I guess I will have to move my pictures over! Thanks Rick!

Sure is a pretty flower!

Lovely! I wish I could get my L. duchartrei to flower!

Joe, it's smart of you to add the pic of the leaf axil hairs to the data base. And it is especially satisfying that in the caption you took the time to describe the photo's purpose. We really lack identifying characteristics of so many of the entries. The "pretty" parts are always welcome to the eye, but often it doesn't say much to differentiate one species/cultivar from another because there can be so much variation. When I grew my L. taliense, I took particular note of the leaf form along with other characteristics, as it came from a vendor known for her misidentifications. Leaves were more clearly one-veined than yours. In addition, your plant (not just the flower) has the general look of duchartrei, and not so much taliense, even taking into account that yours is pot grown and not a "perfect" example. One of those intuitive things that comes with long term experience and along with long term observation from all sources.

Alas, my L. taliense died (of bulb rot) a few years ago during a wet summer. Now I have new seedlings coming....

The fake Lilium tsingtauense:
Lilium tsingtauense x (L.medeoloides and/or L. distichum)





Lilium duchartrei


Lilium lijiangense


Lilium davidii and Lilium davidii var. willmottiae


Lilium leichtlinii var. maximowiczii from wild collected seed on Oyama, Toyama Prefecture, Japan.

Great photography, Rick. Thank you so much for sharing these. Those Lilium leichtlinii var. maximowiczii blooms seem to have a magical glow. Can I detect some variation there? And what are those little flies that like Lilium lijiangense so much? And this is funny... but my enter key seems to have just stopped working. How on earth can I make paragraphs now!

Wait a minute here... my ENTER key stopped working in the dialog box just a little while ago too, but it is working now... weird that we both had the problem.

L. sargentiae

Beautiful Lilium sargentiae

pardalinum said:Wait a minute here... my ENTER key stopped working in the dialog box just a little while ago too, but it is working now... weird that we both had the problem.

And I just confirmed I can ENTER again! Spooky..... *twilight zone music*

Yeah, spooky... I hope I don't lay awake tonight trying to figure that out!

Yes, they do kinda glow! And there is a bit of variation so far. Not in foliage, though. The bottom left pic is from a 3x3x5 inch pot with 4 plants in it, while all the others are in the ground.
I don't know what those tiny flies are..... But they sure are attracted to lijiangense. I actually blew them off for the photo, but they came back almost instantly. There were about twice as many as you see. I've never seen more than a few on any other lily flower.

Thanks for putting those pics in, Joe. They make nice additions to the thread.

L michiganense. I drove around the back way thru the area today and spotted this nice example. I had to raise the camera as high as I could reach for picture 1. There are many, many of these blooming here at this time. I was looking for a yellow-tan variation, but picture 3 is the lightest I could find.










Rich deep color on this one.







Edit Added: I was going to say that normally these enjoy the company of other herbaceous greenery for support but this tall one had a stem diameter of about an inch (2.5cm) and was not dependent for support. I'll get some seed from it if some jerk doesn't pick it first.


Edit Added July 15th, 2014: Another color variation I found is shown in the five pictures below. Pictures were taken in the morning one day and in the afternoon the next day showing them fully reflexed. Note the unique kink in the pedicel of those in this group
.
AM










PM--fully reflexed








Photos below show two different inflorescence types.









Other casual shots:

Amazing variations in color, Lorn. Isn't it so nice to go out and find wild growing lilies .

Most excellent Lorn!

L. leichtlinii

Added pictures to post 658827, L. michiganense above, showing variation.

I my region, all wild specimens I have seen have umbels, not racemes. When Darm Crook gave his talk at this year's NALS convention, he show a lot a photos of Lilium michiganense. When I commented that all the pics showed racemose inflorescences, he replied matter-of-factly, "All my michiganense have racemes." And he has accessions from different parts of the continent.
I only have umbel forms.