Top Ten Best lilies

With thousands of varieties to choose from, lilies provide a range of flower colours, some with scented blooms

- Graham Rice

THERE are many plants that go by the name of lily, but it turns out that not all of them are true lilies with the scientific name Lilium. The daylily looks a little like a true lily, but is in fact a Hemerocallis, and each flower opens only for a day. The white calla lily is nothing like a true lily and is, in fact, a Zantedeschia. Even the biblical “lilies of the field” were probably not lilies at all.

The true lilies 

The true lilies, Lilium, are mostly perennial bulbs from which grows an upright stem up to 6½ft (2m) tall topped with large, showy, often scented, six-petalled flowers each on its own stalk. In shape, they vary from a funnel or trumpet shape to rolled back at the petal tips. Up to 20 flowers may open in each flowerhead.

Many have white flowers, others come in purples, reds, orange and yellow shades, pinks and white – often Al with attractive speckling or streaking or with contrasting colour zones. There are more than 100 species of true lily, mostly growing naturally in the cooler parts of the northern hemisphere. They are most closely related to fritillarias.

Types of true lily 

The RHS lists more than 3,000 different lilies, most of which are hybrids of one sort or another. So, to make them easier to understand, they’ve been divided into nine botanical groups. Most true lilies fall into one of six: Asiatic lilies (Division 1), Longiflorum x Asiatic lilies (Division 1 crossed with Division 5), martagon lilies (Division 2), trumpet lilies (mainly Division 6), oriental lilies (Division 7), species lilies (Division 9).