I am from Buenos Aires (Argentina) and a complete newbie with lilies (except for L longiflorum, which I have grown for many years now).
Last autumn I bought two L. auratum bulbs that came from the northern hemisphere (probably Holland) and were kept refrigerated for some time
I planted them immediately. They sprouted and began their growth cycle (in autumn). One of them grew faster than the other and flowered well (I was really amazed by the size of the flowers).


The weaker one tried to flower in winter, but the buds developed very slowly and as I noticed they were growing a bit distorted I cut them off. Both plants didn't grow much in height (less than 50 cm (20in.)) due to the cold weather.
They kept their leaves till the end of spring and finally dried.
I thought the new bulbs would be underdeveloped due to the short size of the plants but yesterday I decided to dig out the weaker one and the bulb was the same size as the ones I bought and had 2 small bulbils (3/4 in. in diam.) growing from its base.

I took some scales from the bulbs I bought and they produced small plants that are growing in summer


What should I do now (in summer) with the bulbs ?
Give them plenty of water like if they were in Japan that it rains a lot (even if they didn't sprout)?
Or keep them in the dry side till I see new growth?

Will they adjust to this hemisphere some day?

Thank you.

Hi Fabian,

There are a few of us 'southerners' here. The good news is that your new lilies will adapt. From experience sending bulbs the other way - to the north - it does take some time though. Scales are much better at getting in sync. with their new home. Yours look wonderful, you did the right thing by scaling your new bulbs!

If you can plant the mature bulbs out in your garden, or in pots exposed to the natural elements, and just leave them to experience what the seasons provide, I think it would be best. Then give them a couple of years to figure it out.

I'm no expert, but a big believer in just leaving nature to do the 'hard' work.

Your blooms were lovely, hope you stick around to find a whole world of new lily possibilities!

Thank you Della!!!

I grow them outside, in pots. I recently bought some Sunny Martinique, Stargazer and another L. longiflorum (White Heaven) bulbs. But planting the bulbs in the heat of the summer wasn't good. SM and Stargazer are not growing well. They are only 15 cm (6 in.) tall and already developing buds. If they survive I hope they will do better next season.

Thanks again!

That was smart of you to cut off those flower buds when the plant was not developing as it should. When a lily is not doing well and it has flower buds, it will sacrifice the health of the rest of the plant to keep those flower buds going, even if the flower buds don't do well themselves.

Similarly, I would also recommend cutting off the flower buds on your newer Sunny Martinique and Stargazer. They will then work on producing a better bulb for next year, and you will get bigger flowers and more of them next season.

Thank you Leftwood!

I was also going to cut the buds, but this seller I bought the bulbs from usually sells wholesale to florists that grow the bulbs and sell them in pots when they are in flower.
The rest of the bulbs he sells retail.
I want to know if he sent me the ones I asked for or has mixed all the leftover bulbs and... you get what you get.
I need at least to see one flower so I can decide if to buy from him next year or not.
(The quality of the bulbs is good, the price is very good, but next year I must buy them earlier. )

When I bought these bulbs, the one I was interested in was Lilium longiflorum cv. White Heaven.
I added Stargazer and Sunny Martinique because they were cheap and I could include more bulbs in the same shipment.
Unfortunately here we can only get the L longiflorum cultivars sold in Europe for cut flowers... the big ones. Nobody sells the longiflorum lilies you can get in the US for Easter, like cv. 'Nellie White', which are shorter.
The ones in my avatar are 'Snow Queen' 1.5 m high (59 in). They grow very well in pots but the wind is always a problem.
Like in the US and in many other countries, Lilium longiflorum has naturalized in many provinces in Argentina.
These pics of L longiflorum you can see in this article are growing wild in Salta, a northwest province that limits with Bolivia.
(I cannot include links... you can find the article searching for: Presencia de Lilium longiflorum (Liliaceae) adventicia en la Argentina )
I reproduce the pics here:


They look a bit wild, don't they? .... thin stems and very thin leaves.
I would like to see them live.

And practically the only longiflorum cultivar you will ever find in the USA is Nellie White. There use to be a few other longiflorum cultivars sold at Easter time, like Ace, but they have been gone for 30 years. Nellie White is shorter and more compact not because of genetics. All Nellie Whites are infected with Lily Symptomless Virus (LSV). It is this virus that caused them to grow shorter. I would suspect that if you did find and buy Nellie White, it would probably pass the virus to your other longiflorum cultivars in time, and to other lilies. Whether you would actually notice any symptoms, I am not sure.

I would just keep it out of my garden, not interested in virused lilies.

Thanks for the info Rick!
And just in time. A friend of mine goes for vacation to the USA and I was going to ask him to bring me a bulb of Nellie White!

And just so you know, this info about LSV comes directly from Dr. Neil Anderson from the University of Minnesota. Ten? years ago, our North Star Lily Society asked him to speak at our spring education meeting. He has been doing work with (especially) with L. longiflorum and L. formosanum and their hybrid progeny (L. xformolongi) in an effort to produce "everblooming" lilies. It does work(!).

I think we (the club) tried to reach out to him for an update this year. Not sure what the result was...

I read this article about L. xformolongi. It is in the web
The forum doesn't allow me to post links, but the publication title is:

It shows pics of the daughter shoots that grow after the main shoot's flowers are spent.
Very interesting!!

Yes, when I had L. formosanum and the closely related L. philippinense strains that survived my cold winters here in the north, if I dug the bulbs in the fall, some of them would show this trait. They didn't shut down for the winter like most lilies, and would begin sending up a shoot on their own schedule, not waiting to go through winter.

This is L. philippenense (left) and L. formosanum (right), dug in fall (21 October in the northern hemisphere)


The left bulb shows the normal seasonal stem and a small underground shoot. This small shoot is never visible on regular lily bulbs at this time of year, because they are waiting to come up next season. But this bulb shoot is not waiting. Similarly, the right bulb has the normal season stem and another smaller stem that emerged in the late summer rather than spring. If my warm season was long enough, I would have had flowers from that in the fall.

Really impressive! I have never seen new bulbs sending shoots in the same season they were formed.
Winters are not very cold in here, but all the new bulbs of L longiflorum always wait for the next season to send shoots, no matter what I do.
I read that in Hawaii they keep growing continuously:

"Some require special treatment--for me, L. longiflorum needs a dry rest in August-September, or else it will keep growing from the top of the stem (Make a bulb in the air and keep growing) and never flower."
(Search for: Growing Lilies in Tropical Climates?
[email protected] (Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:51:46 PDT) Archives from the Pacific Bulb Society

Do all the tropical lilies behave this way?
What happens with the new bulbs of your pics if you let these shoots grow and then they freeze in winter?

What happens with the new bulbs of your pics if you let these shoots grow and then they freeze in winter?

It never seemed to affect the winter hardiness of the bulb itself. A quite surprising observation, I would say. Leaves and stems always froze green, as orientpets often do here, also. When a green shoot was still growing froze, as with the right bulb in my pic, I am not sure how the bulb responded the following spring. I suspect the it just produced a completely new shoot, but much later in the season.

I don't know if this is a "tropical bulb" trait. Not many people grow Lilium neilgerrense, for instance, to know.

As usual, I have to buy all the lily bulbs out of season (they come from Europe). So they begin to grow in autumn as if it were spring.
Even if winters are very mild here, these plants undoubtedly do not like cool weather.
It is autumn now, 7 C (44 F) and look at the flowers of L. lancifolium splendens...



(I had to spray the plant with gibberellic acid so that it grew a bit more, or else it would stay dwarf, and it worked)

What should I do now with these L. auratum plantlets I got from scaling last year? Force them to dry or keep watering them?

I think I would let your L. auratum grow for 2-3 more weeks, then begin the drying out, and put the pot and all (or just the bulbs) in the refrigerator for 2-3 months, then bring them out and grow them. If you store just the bulbs, put them in a plastic bag with barely moist vermiculite or peat (best), or a light soil. If more than a few drops of condensation occurs in the refrigerator, then it is too moist. If you put the pot in the refrigerator, do not put it inside bag. Store it open for a month, and when it seems bone dry, seal it up in a plastic bag for the rest of the time in the refrigerator.

Sorry to say that is not Lilium lancifolium spendens, or even Lilium lancifolium. It is a very nice lily, though. All Lilium lancifolium will have hairy buds, and will grow bulbils where the leaves meet the stem after they flower. L. lancifolium flowers hang straight down, not out-facing as your flower does. Regular L. lancifolium and L. lancifolium spendens will have hundreds of spots spread across the entire petal surfaces.

Thanks!
I'll do that with L auratum seedlings.

I also cut off the flowers of L Sunny Martinique, as you told me to do, after I could check the color of the flowers corresponded to that hybrid.

I think that maybe they are L lancifolium but the flowers grew distorted due to the cool weather.
You can see in the pic they didn't even develop stamens or pistils.
(Where I bought the bulbs they do not have any other that resembles this one)