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LILIUM ZAIRII – A NEW LILIUM FORMOSANUM TYPE FOUND IN ZAIRE
In the natural stand, this lily presented an evergreen type; while one stem was in flower another was in fruit and the third just emerging.
The seeds were collected in Zaire, brought to Poland and sown in July 1983 in the greenhouse of the Department of Breeding and Seed Production of Ornamental Plants in the Research Institute of Pomology and Floriculture in Skierniewice, Poland.
The epigeal germination of the seeds occured in two weeks.
The seedlings produced numerous long and narrow rosette leaves.
The shoot emerged when the seedling had approximately 12 – 15 rosette leaves and flower bud formation started after 8 – 9 months after sowing.
We found that L. zairii can be grown in greenhouse conditions from seed to bloom in about ten months.
The first flowers of the introduced lily appear in May 1984. The flowers show a great morphological resemblance to L. formosanum; it is a typical white trumpet shaped lily with large, fragrant flowers, light, bronze-red colored on the reverse.
The anthers are bronze and end-standing on long, white-green filaments.
The style is longer than the filament with a large light green stigma.
After autogamic pollination the seeds were maturing in 3 months and the long, narrow seed pods contained a lot of small and light, but well germinated seeds.
The plants were grown in pots and their height was from 60 – 95 cm with the number of flowers per stem differing from 1 – 3.
The bulbs of L. zairii are medium size, elongated and covered with white, closely compacted scales.
A few of the bulbs were planted in July in the open and covered with pine-bark for the winter.
All these bulbs were completely damaged by the frost and none sprouted in the spring.
All the measurements of the plant, biology of flowering, morphological comparisons and cytological investigations are continuing and will be published in the near future.
All this data should determine if L. zairii is indeed a special type, race or variation of