This past week I have been redoing a raised bed that has become overrun with tree roots from a nearby arborvitae and a Japanese Katsura. Among the rest, I have a few wandering species lilies, so I've had to carefully dig, inspecting each shovel of dirt, because I won't know exactly where the bulbs might be. The presence of tree roots have separated winner from loser lilies: those that tolerate heavy root competition and those that don't. So many bulbs have disappeared over time and many bulbs are quite small. I think though, that I didn't realize how dry this garden had become due to the tree roots. I think some might have done better with more water.
Basically, anything from the martagon section of lilies does fine, like these:
The natural cross of L.tsingtauense and L.distichum or L.medeoloides - cleaned up for shipment overseas.
This is one of my early hybrids, a Super Tsing open pollinated seedling. All the bulbs are from one original seedling planted in the bed in 2012. The white roots are the lilies, the dark brown roots are the trees'. You can really see what is happening in the pic looking at the root mass from below, yet the lily still blooms happily.
Another one of my hybrids planted at the same time, again from a single seedling.
Lilium distichum has continued to bloom since 2010, but in all this time, it has not increased, and has waxed and wained some.
One non-martagon that still does well is in massive tree roots is Lilium lijiangense. These six bulbs grew from one original bulb, planted in 2011, that was have the size of any of these.
Two days out of the soil, and they are already turning color:
It, and also a trumpet were the only ones left still with substantial tops.
Yin (planted in 2017) pooped out in three years, Kushi Maya has hung on since 2013, although the last two seasons it has not flowered and bulbs are small.
However Yang (also planted in 2017) has done much better.
Lilium speciosum, planted in 2014, this is the first season it has not bloomed.
I used two parts compost and one part sand as a medium in this bed. Now I will add some more fresh compost, and it will be good to go.
