Thursday 31 December 2015

CHRISTMAS LILIES

Lilium candidum (popularly known as the Madonna lily, Easter lily and Christmas lily in the Southern Hemisphere) is a plant in the true lily family, Liliaceae. It is native to Greece, the western Balkans and the Middle East, and naturalised in other parts of Europe (France, Italy, Ukraine, etc.) as well as in North Africa, the Canary Islands, Mexico, and other places.

It forms bulbs at ground level, and unlike other lilies, has a basal rosette of leaves through the winter, which die back in summer. A leafy flower stem, typically up to 1.2 metres high, sometimes up to 2 metres high, emerges in late spring and bears sweetly and headily fragrant flowers in summer. Flowers are white, flushed yellow at the base.

It has long been cultivated, but is susceptible to virus diseases of lilies, and to Botrytis fungus. One possible way to avoid problems with viruses is to grow plants raised from seed. This is currently in bloom in our garden, although it is suffering a little from the excessive unseasonable December heat (40˚C today!).

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.




3 comments:

  1. Hyvää Uutta-Vuotta 2016
    Happy New Year 2016
    Feliz Año Nuevo 2016

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  2. Happy New Year. Here (U.S.A.) we have those lilies for Easter so here they are Easter Lilies. I know we have opposite seasons from you-we are in winter now and you are in sumer. Although where I live (the /d/e/e/p/ /s/o/u/t/h) we are still having 80 degrees and 90% humidity. Not fun -should be 50s.

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