Re: How do you grow Lilium pardalinum?

Dear Nan

I don't have L. pardalinum but have for many years grown it's close relative L. pitkinenese from what were once the Pitkin Swamps, Sonoma County. I grow it in fairly average semi-shaded conditions in slightly acidic, rather peaty, leaf mouldy soil that has fine sandy grit too. It gets very wet in winter and spring due to local rainfall patterns and I use supplementary watering in that part of the garden until this lily has finished flowering. The shade is high shade under a 15m tall Acer pentaphyllum. The lily grows with Trillium sp. and Dicentra (the sp with persistent succulent root rhizomes) and hardy deciduous ferns. Once the lily has finished flowering the soil is allowed to dry out pretty much. I should add that the soil is filled with fibrous tree and shrub roots. This soil is about 30cm deep and underneath there is a layer of very dense clay type soil. My conditions do not seem to replicate a swamp very well. Yet the lily seems happy enough; I have had it for about 25 years. On reading up Patrick Synge LILIES, and the old reliable Woodcock & Stearn LILIES OF THE WORLD it seems these creekside western American species like to grow where there is excellent drainage accompanied by a high water table. The bulbs sit in the soil above the water table and the basal roots get down to the water supply. Is the water at these sites snow melt and does it eventually dry up as summer advances? I do not know but suspect many California swamps and creeks are seasonal as they are here. The bulbs are unusual in that L. pardalinum, pitkinense and others from the western US make scaly runners from the mother bulbs at the end of which new bulbs form. In some species the whole bulb appears to be an elongated, thickly scaled stem that runs a long underground. I've never grown them in pots but as you can see from the growth habit of the bulb it would be hard for such a roaming plant to feel at home contained and cramped in a pot.

regards

trevor
Trevor Nottle
Garden Historian, Garden Writer, Designer, Consultant
WALNUT HILL, 5 Walker Street, Crafers, SA 5152 AUSTRALIA
Tel./ Fax. 61 8 83394210
















































   



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