From “The Species and Varieties of Lilies: Lilium formosanum” in Lilies for American Gardens by George L. Slate:
“The flowers are narrow funnel-shape, with the tips of the segments gracefully recurved, pure white within, suffused with wine-purple without, or occasionally white, fragrant, and from one to ten in number. The purple-brown stem is slender, variable in height from two to six feet, and clothed with numerous, narrow, grasslike, dark lustrous green leaves which are crowded near the base of the stem, but few in number and short below the flowers. The bulb is white, tinged with rose-purple, and nearly round. This lily is a native of Formosa from sea-level to 10,000 feet altitude, where it grows in the sun among coarse grasses in a light, well-drained, somewhat acid soil….
“L. formosanum was discovered in 1858 and in 1880 the firm of Veitch in England received bulbs which they flowered. It passed out of cultivation, but was reintroduced in 1918 by E. H. Wilson. Seeds and bulbs are now generally available from American, Oriental, and European sources in quantity at reasonable prices and the lily is rapidly increasing in popularity.
“L. formosanum… is a beautiful lily well worthy of a place in any garden. The pure white trumpets come in mid-September at Geneva, N. Y., the species remaining in flower until the first frost….
“Seeds of selected pure white strains are now available from various commercial sources. Seedlings, if started early in the year, may be expected to flower the first season and field-grown seedlings will flower the second fall…. In warmer climates the bulbs grow continuously, sending up new shoots which keep the colony in flower over a long period…. The Award of Merit of the Royal Horticultural Society was given to this species in 1921.”
Hello!
This is the first of three posts with photographs of an astonishing lily whose formal name is Lilium formosanum, also known by the common names Formosa Lily, Taiwan Lily, or Taiwanese Lily.
“Formosanum” in the plant’s species name reflects its discovery and its native location: the country of Taiwan was primarily known in the West as Formosa until the post-World War II era, after which “Formosa” declined in use in favor of “Taiwan.” As is often the case with the scientific names of plants, though, the designated species name Lilium formosanum wasn’t changed; but botanical literature would evolve to reflect the political realities by treating Formosa Lily, Taiwan Lily, or Taiwanese Lily all as informal synonyms for the same plant.
On July 17, I was at Oakland Cemetery photographing a variety of midsummer bloomers — including anemone, amaryllis, crinum, early zinnias, and many of the Japanese Show Lilies for my last three posts (see, for example, Lilium speciosum, the Japanese Show Lily (3 of 3)) when I came upon these new plantings. Here’s the first photograph I took:
This is not a particularly good photograph simply because the sun was too bright to properly separate the foreground from the background and clearly show one of these plants’ most distinctive features: their height. Lucky for me, though, all I had to do was turn around to find additional plantings, where the plants were growing against a shaded background provided by numerous trees. Here their height is even more apparent and now you can see their incoming flower buds, each one a long, bright yellow oval glowing in the filtered light:
Given how much of my photography takes place at Oakland, it might seem surprising that I keep discovering new species. But the cemetery is in year seven of a 20-year, $43.5 million renovation plan, which is so comprehensive that it includes architectural and structural changes, as well as the rejuvenation of and often addition to its existing landscaping. Click the first image below if you’d like to see the entire timeline; this project started in 2018 and extends through 2037.
So for this rather obsessive botanical photographer, the ongoing renovations mean that — in addition to natural changes that occur in dynamic gardens like those at Oakland — I can often encounter newly established plantings of species I’ve never seen before from one season to the next. I can even pretend to be one of those intrepid Victorian naturalists, don my floppy hat and sport my camera, slink and shoot among the flora, then return home to scour various sites and libraries to identify and learn more about the plants.
That, of course, is exactly what I did with these Formosas, and how I learned about its unique capabilities (like those I excerpted from George Slate’s book at the top): its adaptability to multiple soil and lighting conditions; its ability to reach and maintain substantial heights and even weather thunderstorms; and — importantly for my discovery — the fact that it can achieve this growth in the same year it’s planted. I can hardly wait to see how it expands its territory in the next year or two of its lifecycle.
I wasn’t sure how long it took these lilies to bloom, though, so I had planned to go back in about two weeks from July 17th and check on their growth. Summer thunderstorms intervened, keeping me away for longer than that; but I got a second look at them about three weeks later, on August 9. On that date, some of the plants had indeed been damaged by the storms, but most showed the strength and resilience that’s typical of these lilies, many now standing nearly six feet tall, with long, nodding blooms spread across their tops. The first two photos in the galleries below provide a wide-angle view of about 15 plants at the intersection I show above; the rest (and those in my second post) are from both locations I show above, from various angles and distances to adequately represent all this lily plant’s characteristics.
In the third post in this series, I’ll show these same lilies in a different location, where they’re tucked near an Oakland pond and surrounded by ferns. The three posts together demonstrate yet another characteristic of this lily: its ability to thrive in a variety of conditions that other lilies would find intimidating. These three locations show the lily capable of excelling in: full-day sun with sandy soil; part-day sun with more compact soil it shares with smaller plants like amaryllis; and towering above thick ferns, where the sunlight is diminished and the soil — supporting the ferns — is more like that of a shade garden or even a bog. These characteristics help account for the excitement about this lily in the quotation at the top of this post, especially given that the lily achieves this level of growth in the very same year its bulbs are planted or its seeds are sown.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
