Lily Foliage

Not sure but I think Columbia-Platte was the original (wholesale?) company. The Lily Garden was the natural retail outcome of that.

Do you know if she is using her own name now or still the Columbia-Platte for registering.

On her website it infers she registers them in the Columbia-Platte name. It sounds like the name she still uses , even for the Lily Garden Catalog. I would bet that someone who has such a wonderful reputation in the lily world, would not want to change over to another name. If one is successful in a field under one name, perhaps it behooves them to keep that name. It sounds like she has been working on lilies for many, many years.

"Here you will find lilies to please every palate, including many of our own hybrids that span the spectrum of flower size, color, plant height, shape and form. Our own unique creations are marked “CP,” short for Columbia-Platte Lilies, our original business name. These wonderful lilies are born and bred on our farm!"
An exerpt from the Lily Garden Website.

I almost forgot and then I looked at the Madonna Lilies last night and remembered I was going to take pictures of the foliage. What a difference a day makes. The krinkly, spiral look was much more pronounced yesterday than today. But there are still plenty of swirls.

And another shot

And last. This isn't very good. I was trying to show the tips of some of the leaves and how they curled around. You can see it on a few. I should try to remember to get these pics much earlier next year.

Despite the fact that its flower stem was destroyed last year my survivor martagon lily seems to make flower buds. I'm still wondering if the abnormal pale colour isn't due to a lack of nutrient or a deficiency in an element like magnesium. I know it has always been on the pale side but this year it is even more pronounced.
The strange thing is that its immediate neighbour plants don't show any sign of lack of magnesium.
The picture isn't very sharp.

If by immediate neighbor you mean right next to it, then I have no real answer, except that in my opinion, people seem to make too big of a deal about why one thing grows and another doesn't, and the like. There are so many variables. It is often impossible to pinpoint.

However, I do find that my martagons grow lusher and deeper green (as well as faster) without the competition of tree roots.

This one actually is out of the reach of any tree roots, so it really has no serious competition. Its immediate neighbours are a Lamium orvala and a Dicentra formosa; a clematis nearby is still too small to give any serious competition.
I suppose if it was a serious lack it wouldn't make flower buds ?

I found my lilies that are near a Ceanothus often start with pale streaks as if they are ill, but once they get growing properly they green up. It has also been very dry this year, I wonder if that makes them pale for a start (if you have also lacked in rain bonitin), rain makes everything lush.

Wallaby, it has been dry over here for a very long period, almost a whole month without a drop. Farmers are seriously complaining. (Belgium normally is a country with more than average rainfall) and with abnormal high, mid-summer temperatures. But I do water regularly and thoroughly, which is still in the possibilities if you have a tiny garden.

Here is another picture of the whole lily, and I thought of lack of magnesium because one can notice that the area around the veins is more green than the rest of the leaf. This is the same lily I had posted my first picture in this thread, I call it my survivor lily. Two of the ones I newly bought this year are also showing signs of making flower buds.

It does look like it's suffering from a lack of something! Perhaps give it some tomato food? That has many trace elements in it.

We have had 6 weeks with just a light unmeasurable drizzle followed by less than 1/8" about a week ago. I have used the hose pipe a little on some of the garden but it's getting seriously dry, I have so much and water is now very expensive! They are promising rain next week! Trouble is we never seem to get it here when others do.

They also promise rain over here for next week. I have been enjoying the summerish weather but now I am more than ready for a good rain shower!

Thanks for the advise of the tomato fertilizer.

I remember I have given it some organic fertilizer meant for lavender around February in the idea that Lavender likes alkaline soil and I had read somewhere, forgot where, that the martagon was an exception in the Lilium family in the way that it grows in more alkaline soils than the others that like it more acidic.

It grows on limestone slopes, so alkaline should suit it. It also grows in spruce forests, that should be more acidic, decidous and oak forests more alkaline.

http://www.deflorum.com/species/martagon.html

The most common fertilizer here in the USA, Miracle-Gro, also has both macro and micro nutrients, whether it is tomato, flower or all purpose food. This would include magnesium. Here, if it is a deficiency causing your symptoms, Bonitin, magnesium deficiency is the number 2 cause with a lack of iron being number one. However, in most cases it is a high soil pH that causes the poor uptake of these nutrients, not a deficiency of the nutrients in the soil. Whether this would actually hold true for martagons, it would seem doubtful.

I propose that you buy a fertilizer (with the nutrients in question) that can be mixed with water and applied to the foliage. This would give an almost immediate uptake of nutrients, and you would then know if that is really your problem. If there is a noticeable greening in 3-5 days, then you know a nutrient deficiency is your problem.

The tree root competition I spoke of earlier, I believe, causes more of a stress on the plants due to lack of water, rather than nutrients, and thus causes a lighter green coloring (but not with dark veins). That is, unless the nutrient in need is nitrogen. Nitrogen is the limiting nutrient for growth in trees in general, not phosphorus or potassium, or any micro nutrient.

As far as I understood from the website the martagon grows as wel in alkaline as in more acidic soils

It could very well be a too high ph, probably caused by me giving it the lavender fertilizer. I might have been too generous in my gift. I always have to fight the very wrong impulse; 'the more the better'. I suppose adding some peat could help in the long run.
I'll try the method of the leaf fertilization if I find a biologic organic one; I don't like to support the artificial fertilizer companies.
Thanks for all the valuable information!

Compost materials are great buffers. That is, while they mitigate the pH problems of way too alkaline or way too acidic, they also do less in changing the pH when the soil is already closer to neutral. The big exception is sphagnum peat, which of course always produces more acidity (assuming you add enough to make a difference). I suspect a contributing factor is that it is so resistant to breakdown.

Here are some pixie asiatics coming up. I thought they looked rather odd this year being wider on top.

L xanthellum var. luteum 2 days ago.

Time to show a Lilium tsingtauense natural hybrid (sometimes called L. miquelianum). Lilium tsingauense will always have this feature, but L. miquelianum may or may not. And yes, it's suppose to look like that:

This message was edited Oct 3, 2008 8:36 AM

Photo 2:

Photo 3 (a different plant):

The first time I saw Lilium tsingtauense was at a specialty nursery, and I didn't know much about it. I really wanted it, but it looked like it was viruses or something, as I didn't know its growth habit at that time. The foliage does flatten out as the season progresses, and the waviness disappears.

This post also reserved for one more photo to come.

Lilium x 'Super Tsing'. A hybrid of L. martagon and L. tsingtauense. No waving here, but it does show the variegation that appears in tsingtauense in the early spring. Seen better in the second photo, I think, the variegation seems to be variable in intensity from year to year.

This year is low intensity.

Groovy.

Ya know, puns are my favorite. This one being the best complent ever.
Leave it to Moby!

I have been applying now for about 10 days a leaf fertilizer to my L.martagon with the pale foliage, but nothing happened, it just stays like it was.