Lilium iridollae

Extremely rare lily native to just a few sites in the southeastern US and discovered by Mary Henry in 1940. She found this growing in the Florida panhandle and it is known as the Panhandle Lily or as Mary described it, Pot of Gold Lily. This is virtually unobtainable, and we were lucky to receive ours from a botanist friend who is doing work on the genus. This is found growing along streams and particularly in association with pitcher plant bogs, so its habitat is threatened by human mismanagement. It is not all that common to find a lily species adapted to warm winters and high humidity but perhaps the moist conditions cools the bulbs.

This striking Turk's cap lily will be 3'-6' at maturity and have from 1-4 flowers in late July through August. The bulbs are very rhizomatous and will make a nice little colony when happy. Speaking of happy, these have a reputation for being finicky but we wonder if this was not a fault of tissue culture as most experience with this species were with tissue-cultured bulbs, a process which has since been discontinued. These are not from TC and obviously our friend grew these quite well in containers, in a mix of 50-50 peat moss and sand, as he sent us nice blooming size divisions. Mary Henry grew and flowered this from seed in a pot on her porch in Philadelphia and then to further douse this notion of being a persnickety bulb, our friend reports these being grown in an Ann Arbor Michigan garden quite successfully for several years. These are allied to Lilium superbum and apparently no more difficult to grow. The bulbs are naturally very small but increase well. An absolute must for the lily collector.