I collected a few seed pods in 2017 from my cousin's lilies. She doesn't remember the name or type, just that she would have ordered them from "Dutch Gardens" or some such company several years ago. Here are some phone pics of her lilies from a few weeks ago:



And below are pics of the seed and seed pods I collected in 2017. I now notice there are darker and lighter seeds...



Anyway, I stashed the seeds in the fridge and promptly forgot about them until the end of 2018. Below are the notes I entered in the Plant Lists database:

December 29, 2018: Seeds sown (lots of seeds from Dale's 2017G in milk jug @ room temp (These seeds are from her very tall lilies in the east bed under the poplars.))
January 9, 2019: Seeds germinated (2 - These (plus a couple dozen more) grew until late fall 2019. Watered the container mid-December, or so, and they started coming back up the end of December. By late February or early March, it was obvious 1 was going to bloom. It developed 2 buds. As of 3-22-20, another plant is just beginning to show a single bud.)

After watching these seedlings for the last few months, I'm thinking there are two different types of lilies. I'm hoping someone here can help me out with their IDs.

Here's how the seedlings looked about a month after they re-emerged from their first dormancy.


A few months later, a different type seems to be emerging?


One of the earlier-emerging types, showing two buds.


Buds getting farther along.


The first plant to bloom.


The second plant to bloom. No appreciable scent on either set of blooms.


And now, two or three seedlings have begun to develop bulbils. (Yes, everything has been beaten up multiple times by the hail.) The seedlings that bloomed are NOT forming bulbils.


So...my guess would be an Asiatic type and a tiger lily of some sort? Not sure how that could have happened, though

Also, these guys lived in their milk jug nursery until March/April 2020, when I tipped the whole works into an 8" pot. I certainly didn't expect to be rewarded with blooms so soon, but perhaps that is fairly common? Thanks very much for any commentary

I think that yellow tiger one is lilium leichtlinii.

I would agree with Lucius on the yellow lily. And it was widely offered in the Dutch Trade for a while.

Congratulations on your new seedling flowers.

Thank you Lucius and Tracey! How lovely to have an ID on the pod parent.

I found Leftwood's list of bulbil-producing lilies (The thread "Another bulbil question" in Lilies forum) and see Lilium leichtlinii is in the "sometimes" category. Perhaps the combination of hail storms and very warm (to us) temperatures induced some of the seedlings to produce bulbils.

Why/how there seems to be two different types remains a mystery to me, though I suppose I could try replicating the results. Maybe two separate plantings of darker from lighter seeds wouldn't hurt either.

I do agree the yellow is L. leichtlinii. It would be very unusual to get such large diversity with one pollination of a species lily, but if there were multiple kinds of pollen (i.e. from different looking other lilies, rather than just one), then the diversity could easily be explained. Sometimes, even the same parent pollinations but on two different pods can yield different results.

There can be a lot of exceptions, but generally, the darker seeds are good viable seed, and the light ones are probably not. If you don't know how to tell the difference, always just plant everything.

Actually, I think your comment explains what may have happened. My cousin has a fair collection of (purchased) lilies. She doesn't have an interest in keeping track of things like cultivar, source, hybrid, species, etc. The pods I collected were all bee pods, and I sowed a mixture of seeds from all four pods. If I sow more of these seeds, I'll take a closer look to see if the lighter seeds appear to be viable. Thanks very much!