Description

Lilium heldreichii Freyn 1880

Origin:
Northern to Western Greece

Laboratory comment:
Lilium heldreichii is subsumed to Lilium chalcedonicum, but what makes sense to our use keeping this lily apart by mentioning it separately and caring for its separate propagation, too. Indeed it comes very close to chalcedonicum. Heldreichii occurs in both forms, immaculatum and maculatum (with spots). As we cannot rely coming true from seeds we kept on bulbs we got sent from Christian Lueg in autumn 2021. Heldreichii shows densely scattered leaves, but less densely as in L. chalcedonicum, moreover the hairs of the distal inflorescense are missing at heldreichii. An additional distinct difference is shown by the plants´ size, getting up to 2m tall, chalcedonicum usually bears a shorter and hairy inflorescense.
There are authors keeping heldreichii for a natural hybrid among carniolicum and chalcedonicum we don´t believe in.

Propagation:
sowing Lilium heldreichii # 1 CL (10.21) (Lheld1)
source: G. Stettner, Deutschland
sowing: (11.21)
germination: (02.22)
tc: (08.22)

product-image in courtesy of Ernst Gügel