Quarryhill Botanical Garden

This spectacularly colorful lily produces purple-flushed green stems to 2 meters tall, and scattered, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate leaves up to 18 cm long with vivid, parallel venation.  Its bulbs are flattened, about 5-7 cm in diameter, with broadly lanceolate white scales, displaying an unprecedented range of colors, from light yellow to purplish-brown.

Flowers, in groups of 1-12, are produced in leafy, nodding racemes or subumbels.  Tepals, with recurved ends and undulate margins, are colored rose to brilliant purple-red, suffused with white and sporting vivid spots of deep carmine.  Both surfaces display nectaries with red, fimbriate (having hair-like fringes) projections and papillae.  The pistil is long and curved, and stamens contain large, dark crimson anthers, up to 2 cm long, supported on diverging green filaments, 5-6 cm long.  These fragrant flowers appear in late summer, followed by 3 cm long capsules with 3 broad grooves, in October.

Though common in cultivation, this lily is rare in the wild, occurring on the southern Japanese islands of Shikoku and Kyushu, in moist woodlands below 1,000 meters elevation.  It was first introduced into Europe in 1830 by the collector von Siebold and soon widely propagated in Dutch nurseries.  Its edible bulbs were widely popular in China for many years.  It prefers part shade to full sun and rich, acidic soil.