Lilium regale

Lilium regale, the Regal Lily, grows in the wild in a very restricted range along a 30-mile stretch of cliffs in the Minjiang Valley north of Chengdu in the Hengduan Mountains of Sichuan. It was first collected by Ernest Henry "Chinese" Wilson in 1903 and has since become the most popular lily in the world.

Working for James Veitch & Sons, Wilson had first collected Lilium regale in the Min Valley in 1903 and on his next expedition, which set off in 1907 - this time collecting for the Arnold Arboretum - over 95 percent of the 18,237 lily bulbs he gathered rotted on the return trip to Boston because Wilson did not have them packed in a protective coating of clay. It wasn't until his 1910 expedition did he successfully collect enough material for this superb lily to be subsequently introduced into cultivation and the horticultural market in the United States. It was on this 1910 trip, after marking 6,000 bulbs for lifting, that he famously broke his leg in two places when a landslide swept down on his party as it climbed a narrow path. Narrowly escaping death and the amputation of his badly infected leg, Wilson referred to his subsequent limp as his 'Lily limp'. Of the many plants that Wilson collected it was Lilium regale that he was most proud of having introduced.

The ease of cultivation of Lilium regale, its hardiness and drought-tolerance, its stately regal poise, its tall height, its large elongated funnel-shaped blooms together with its extraordinary sweet scent took the world by storm and although in the intervening century it has served as a parent plant for many trumpet lily hybrids no hybrid has ever matched it. 

Intensely fragrant, the scent from Lilium regale is heady to the point of intoxication. Pure white flowers with a sulphur-yellow throat and a purplish-pink colouration on the outer tepals. Stunning!