Flora of New Zealand Series

Tiger Lily

Fig. 23I

Plant robust; bulb 5-10 cm diam., globose, whitish or yellow, occasionally tinged purple. Stems 60-120 cm high, sometimes woody below, erect, dark purple-brown, with soft, white, cobwebby hairs, rooting at base, the subterranean rooting portion to ± 50 cm depth in loose soil. Leaves many, 6-15 × 1-2 cm, dark green, sessile, linear-lanceolate, upper with bulbils in axils. Flowers (1) -5-6- (15) on simple or shortly-branched axis, deep bright orange-red with numerous purple-black spots, nodding; segments 6-10 cm long, strongly revolute. Capsule not seen.

N. Auckland - Rangitoto Id. S. Nelson - Westport; Marlborough - Blenheim; Westland - Hokitika, spreading; Canterbury - Fairlie; Otago - near Milton, Tapanui. Roadside and waste places in cemeteries, persistent outcast from horticulture.

(Korea, Japan, China)

First record: Healy 1958: 540.

First collection: "Orowaiti Cemetery, Westport, land overgrown and neglected, much bracken, R. Mason and N. T. Moar 2151, 31.1.1953, a patch growing wild and spreading" (); identified as the horticultural double cultivar ' Flore Pleno' .

FL. 1-2.

Many horticultural cultivars are now grown and may escape.

Ohwi (Fl. Japan 1965, 297) and Ingram (Baileya 16, 1968, 14-19) consider that the correct name for the tiger lily is the earlier L. lancifolium Thunb. Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 2, 1794, 333. However, Woodcock and Stearn (Lilies of the World 1950, 353) note "The name L. lancifolium Thunberg (1794) was primarily based on the species named L. tigrinum Ker-Gawler in 1810, but Thunberg' s description of the flowers does not fit any Asiatic lily; as moreover the name L. lancifolium hort. has been so long and consistently associated with L. speciosum it seems best to avoid error and confusion by keeping the name L. tigrinum for the tiger lily."