Oriental Lilies
As you can see from the navigation menu on the top, lilies are almost an addiction for us. Certainly over the years, in particular the last 4, our appetite for a wider assortment of fragrant lilies has increased.
By mid May 2003 we had planted an additional 8 different Oriental Hybrids, as well as some Trumpet Lilies and Asiatic Lilies. Yes, it's almost like a disease and perhaps we should go for counseling:)
As a point of interest, it is worth noting that of the new ones we planted last year (2003) a high percentage of the Orientals did NOT come up again in 2004 and those that did were mostly rather on the small side; thin stems, perhaps 2 or 3 buds at the most. Disappointing, really..... For instance, 'Nippon' had been planted in a number of locations and the ones in one of our pots in the backyard are MUCH shorter than last year, with fewer buds, yet the ones in the front were sizeable.
While this category is labelled 'Oriental Hybrids', in reality only some of them truly are. Having done a fair bit of scouring various sites on the web that deal with Lilies, particularly breeder's sites, it's becoming clear that a few of the ones we have are described by breeders as 'Orienpets' or 'OT''s and one or two may prove to be 'LA's' once we properly identify them. In all fairness, we simply assumed that because a package was labeled as a fragrant lily that it is an Oriental Hybrid. Things just aren't that simple unfortunately. In our ignorance about the various lily cultivars and hybrids we jumped to a conclusion. The 4 OT's we have now can be viewed through their own category off the main lily menu, or directly through this link.
An industrious/curious individual would have gone to the trouble of counting the number of varieties we have listed on the top. There are 21 and that number will probably grow again as time goes on and we can properly identify some of the mystery ones we now have. For 2004 we are adding a few more, 4 Orienpets and 3 Asiatics: 'Shocking', 'Visaversa', 'Yelloween' and 'Amatist' as the fragrant Orienpets and 'Suncrest', 'Red Bull' and 'Polyanna' as LA hybrids. In addition, our friend Roak gave us an 'Opus One' Oriental, a 'White Tiger' and an Asiatic called 'Cordelia'.
Since a few of the lilies we planted in 2003 got into the ground rather late, there are still a few bulbs that show smallish buds on August 18th, 2003. That led us to believe we may not see some of these late lilies in bloom until September!
Indeed we DID have lilies into late September 2003, just go to the month of September and scroll down the page to see what was still in bloom that late in the year.
