In Praise of the Lily
Lilies in Their Homes. By Alice C. Maxwell. (Collins. 16s.)
MANY books have been written about lilies, but within my reading experience none with a more richly compact arrangement of lucid and accurate information than Mrs. Constable Maxwell's Lilies in Their Homes. The book is divided into three parts. The first is a fascinating account of lilies against their geographical background in Europe; Asia and North America : lilies are not found in Africa, Australasia or South America. The second part deals with hybrid- ising, propagation and pests. The third part gives all the help any amateur could desire for growing every lily the most recherché bulb- list can offer him.
Let us celebrate the jubilee of beloved L. Regale with a quotation :
" L. Regale is only found in the extreme west of Szechwan, barely 250 miles from Tibet, and so gets the full rigours of the Tibetan climate. This includes heat in summer, intense cold in winter, and at all times terrific gales. Surrounded by hills whose tops are always covered by snow, in a series of narrow valleys at an elevation between 2,500 and 6,000 ft., this lily is found growing in great profusion. It has never been seen outside a radius of 50 miles from where it was first discovered.
" It was in this valley of the river Min, one of the four rivers which gives Szechwan its name, that in 1903 E. H. Wilson first discovered L. Regale. In the preface of his book on East Asiatic lilies, he gives a graphic description of the wonderful sight of the tens of thousands of blooms which greeted him, growing from every rock and cranny from the river's edge to high up on the mountain- side, and filling the air with their fragrance, ' transforming the lonely semi-desert region into a veritable fairyland.' " It is fantastic to think that the natural habitat of this lily, so easy to grow and so easy to increase by seed that the humblest garden can have it, is confined to a space smaller -than Hampshire and that it had wasted its sweetness on the desert air for thousands and thousands of years.
For the last few years I have been puzzled by the absence of L. Monadelphum from every bulb-list, and, since anybody who has grown • this canary-yellow Caucasian beauty must crave for it, I. am shocked but not surprised to hear that in 1945 Mrs. Maxwell's Inverness-shire garden was raided and all her monadelphum bulbs carried off One of my most cherished memories is of sitting by the lire at the inn in Kyle of Lochalsh on a stormy autumn night and talking about flowers with a minister whose name maddeningly escapes me, though a daffodil was called after him. He told me of a L. Monadelphunt that grew under an apple-tree in his orchard and flourished so mightily on the mulching of the fruit-tree that it pushed its way through the apple-blossom over ten feet above it.
Which is the queen of lilies ? In spite of the Japanese who regard it as vulgar, I shall bow to L. Auratum. Yet I have never managed to grow Aurattun even moderately well, and until I read Mrs. Maxwell's book I had vowed not to spend any more money on courting this indifferent beauty. Now I know that I shall start again, for she makes it sound ridiculously easy :
" Twelve miles from Inverness, Laura, Lady Lovat, had for eight
or nine years a border 100 feet long planted mainly with L. Auratum and L. Auratunt Platyphyllum, the stems growing 6 ft. to 8 ft. high in a good year and each carrying up to forty individual blooms. Here the annual rainfall is between 26 in. to 28 in. A Thuja hedge, running parallel to the border, 3 ft. away on the east side, made a green background for the lilies, protected them from winds and lessened the danger from late spring frosts, which so often have a devastating effect on northern gardens. The white border was a lovely sight, with hydrangea paniculata, various verbascums and other white and lemon-coloured flowers, besides other lilies such as L. Henryi, C. giganteum, etc. ; until the war years came and left it only a memory." I look back in memory to that border as the most beautiful I ever saw.
" There is a grace and poise about L. Martagon Album which few other lilies can rival." I wonder if Mrs. Maxwell wrote " no other lily " first, for I am sure that is her true opinion. She will not allow the wine-dark ordinary Martagon British nationality, and I am afraid, however unwillingly, we shall have to agree with her that it is a garden escape. All the same, when many years ago I fpund it growing wild in the glade of a Hampshire wood, and kept the secret all through my boyhood, I should have been distressed by such scepticism.
One item of information delighted me. When the treaty was concluded between Britain and Nepal in 1816, which led to the Gurkhas serving in the Indian Army, Dr. Wallich, the botanist, accompanied the Government mission and discovered Liliutn Giganteum. What a charming double ! The smallest soldiers and the tallest lilies making their debut together 1 I press Lilies in Their Homes upon the attention of gardeners. Every page is readable ; every page is instructive ; every page is a model of what such pages should be, and in spite of so much sesquiped- alian Latinity I found only one misprint. L. Pardalinum Augusts= folium should be Angustifilium, and I only mention that misprint to demonstrate with what complete absorption I have read Mrs. Maxwell's invaluable book. The pictures of lilies growing in the Edinburgh Royal Botanic garden are a joy.
COMPTON MACKENZIE.
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