Back to the Elegant Lilium

The Lilium is one of the most popular flowers of all time. Although I've been growing every kind of plant for a long, long time and my favourite of course, is the Ixia from South Africa, I also fell in love with Lilium about fourteen years ago.

I attended many of the meetings of the Australian Lilium Society and grew quite a lot of the hybrids, as well as dabbling in a few of the most well-known and easily-grown species here, such as L. formosanum and L. phillipenense.

During this period I also wrote quite a few articles on growing Lilium such as Growing Lilium 1 as well as Growing Lilium 2 . There is also an article on hybrids Lilium Hybrids and on Scaling and Twin Scaling at Scaling and Twin Scaling . These will be followed up in time with a look at some of the species as well as general tips on growing.

You can also take a few moments to check out all my wonderful Lilium images on my pages here: Lilium Images

Establishing this new part of my plant activity was quite exciting for me as I was enthralled by the beauty of these wonderful flowers and their general culture. I attended many of the Lilium Shows and talked to many other growers and hybridisers in Victoria, Australia and overseas.

What I found interesting was, that although the hybrids grow easy, many of the species are a real challenge and quite difficult to grow. For that reason, quite a lot of the growers did not grow many of the species and concentrated mainly on the hybrids.

As a keen photographer, quite a lot of my time was spent in building up a collection of photographs, taken mainly at the yearly International Flower Shows where the garden displays have often featured lilium in their design concepts of their displays. Thankfully, I still have these photos available for all to see and I have started to compile my collection for the internet, which is quite a job in itself.

Then, fate dealt me a cruel hand as I became very ill, which actually put me into a near-death situation. I was hospitalised for quite a long period of time and spent many months recuperating; and during this time, I lost all of my Lilium collection. And I mean - all of it, as I had no one to look after my plants and they were given away or perished due to lack of TLC.