From “A Plethora of Plants” in The Origin of Plants by Maggie-Campbell Culver:
“In 1899 Ernest Henry Wilson (1876-1930) travelled to China on behalf of the Veitch Nursery….
“It took the young Wilson six months to journey from England to China via the United States; here he took the opportunity to visit the Arnold Arboretum to learn about the latest techniques in plant collection, packaging and transportation….
“Wilson’s first journey was such a success and he returned with so many excellent garden-worthy plants that in 1903 he was engaged a second time by the Veitch Nursery for a further two years. In 1907 and again in 1910 he returned to China, collecting this time on behalf of the Arnold Arboretum. He became so identified with the area and was such a successful plant collector that he was often referred to as ‘Chinese’ Wilson, but his last journey to China nearly cost him his life and left him with a permanent limp….
“It has been estimated that Wilson introduced into Britain between 2,000 and 3,000 different species of seed, and many more herbarium specimens; from the seeds, at least 1,000 new plants have been introduced into cultivation….
“Possibly the most gorgeous is the Regal Lily, Lilium regale, the plant which was the indirect cause of Wilson’s ‘lily limp’. This amiable and accommodating lily, as the writer Alice Coats called his introduction, was first grown in 1905 under the name L. myriophyllum (meaning ‘many leaves’), but even though it was easy to cultivate and sweetly scented, it did not become as popular as Wilson thought it should.
“He was so keen for people to share his enthusiasm for this splendid lily that on his fourth expedition to China, in 1910, he travelled yet again from Shanghai to the borders of Tibet, where he had first found the flower, a trek of over 3,200 km (2,000 miles). The site was a remote mountain valley, and the journey to it was through some of the most difficult and desolate country….
“As Wilson himself said of the route undertaken, it was ‘absolute terra-incognita’. It is a mark of his enthusiasm that he braved this arduous journey again just so that the western world could share in the delights of the Regal Lily. Its gentle beauty and graceful habit absolutely defy its natural home; Wilson recorded in his diary that ‘no more barren and repelling country could be imagined’, but when the lovely lily burst into flower, the landscape was transformed, as he then noted, from ‘a lonely semi-desert region into a veritable fairyland’….
“It was on the return journey that, in trying to escape one of the frequent landslides, Wilson broke his leg. The remaining rigours of the journey, the delay in treatment and the subsequent infection setting in resulted in his almost having to have his leg amputated; in fact, he nearly died. In due course, he returned to America where the infection was finally cured and the leg saved, but Wilson was left, for the rest of his life, with his ‘lily limp’.”
From “Songs of Flowers” by Gwen Funston in I Hear the Song and It Wells in Me by The Poetry Society of Michigan:
Eighty-seven and ninety-two
sat together
listening to old songs
songs from youth
memories of dancing
with long lost mates.
Eighty-seven
tall and stately
dark hair turning gray
crinkled laughter lines
dressed in muted orchid
amethysts and diamonds
singing the words
to every remembered melody.
Ninety-two
tiny and erect
white hair closely waved
complexion lightly etched
neatly dressed in gray
enhanced by white
singing softly
cheeks slightly flushed.
Eighty-seven and ninety-two
an original bouquet
not seniors, not aged,
a royal, regal lily
and delicate, dainty rose.
Hello!
This is the first of two posts with photographs of Regal Lilies (Lilium regale) from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. As you might be able to tell from the first three photos below, these lilies displayed an exuberant mass of flowers, stems, and leaves, so much so that it was a challenge to isolate a few individual flowers for close-up photography.
I had photographed these Regals a couple of times before (see, for example, Summer 2020: Lily Variations (1 of 10) and Lilies on Black Backgrounds (8 of 10)) — where I took the photos from some distance, since these lilies are in a terraced section of the garden, on a grassy stretch above a four-foot stone wall and set back about twenty feet from the public walkway. I hadn’t previously thought about climbing up to get a closer look — one is sometimes unsure about stomping too close to the flowers — but this time I made myself invisible (as Photographers sometimes do) and sneaked up onto the terrace to push my camera into the lilies.
With so many opened flowers, their perfume filled the air and was intoxicating, almost dizzying… and I spent about an hour photographing these beauties, until I saw one of the garden caretakers coming into view and thought I should maybe scram. I felt a wee bit like Ernest Henry Wilson — whose dangerous explorations, excerpted above, led to the introduction of Lilium regale to Britain — but I didn’t get stuck in a landslide or come home with a limp.
Thanks for taking a look!
Wow !!
Thank you!