Antipodean lily season is in full swing, and I wanted to share some photos and ramblings without hijacking gwhizz's menagerie. While I have two offspring of the primate variety, lily babies have been with me longer and earned their place as my first children, so maybe this is more of a family album?
None of these is registered, just seedlings of varying vintages but inter-related breeding. It all began so long ago when a dear lily mentor gave me Lilium davidii and I came home from a lily show with a handful of unusually copper-coloured 1b/c flowers. The F1 generation had serious issues with short, crowded pedicels, but the plants themselves were such resilient survivors over the years in dry, hot, sandy soil, that I figured they had something worth passing on. Finally they met a tall, finely-figured turkscap asiatic with an outstanding inflorescence - fantastic length, placement, angle. It was sold to me un-named, and along with the F1s, was regretfully left behind on moving. Some of their babies though are with me still; mostly (I think?) they have tolerably ok inflorescences, and have gone on to share their genes with other tough and interesting (to me) lilies.
This I nickname 'light', it's the one in my avatar:
