LILIES - RHS Lily Group

18
The lilies of Greece
Arne Strid writes about the five species endemic to this ancient land.
HE GENUS LILIUM is represented by five species within the borders of present-
Tday
Greece, but probably only two of them were known in antiquity. The
famous “lilies” of Minoan wall paintings in Crete and Santorin (Thira) are not lilies
as currently understood, but represent the sea daffodil, Pancratium maritimum
(Amaryllidaceae), a species of sandy beaches still widespread throughout Greece
although declining through development of tourist facilities.
Plant names used by Theophrastos (c. 370-285 B.C.) are often difficult to
interpret, but it seems fairly certain that κρι´νον (krinon) refers to the white
Madonna Lily (Lilium candidum). Κρι´νον το πορφυρου´ν (krinon to porfiroun)
may refer to the scarlet Lilium chalcedonicum which occurs in mountains of
the Peloponnese and Sterea Ellas, including Parnes or Parnitha near Athens,
and may well have been known to Theophrastos. Ημεροκαλλζς (imerokalles)
has been interpreted as Lilium martagon but this seems more doubtful both
for etymological reasons and for the fact that the latter occurs mainly in the
northern parts of modern Greece, reaching its southern limit in Parnassos and
other mountains of central Sterea Ellas.
Modern botanical exploration of Greece started with John Sibthorp (1758-
1796) who on his grand tour in 1786-1787 and on a subsequent tour in 1794
gathered the material for the magnificent Flora Graeca, which appeared in ten
folio volumes in 1806-1840, i.e., long after the death of Sibthorp. Flora Graeca
contains 966 hand-coloured copper engravings based on drawings made in the
field by the artist Ferdinand Bauer who had travelled with Sibthorp – alas, not a
single lily.
Flora Graeca was preceded by an octavo work without illustrations, the Florae
Graecae Prodromus (1806-1816), which amounts to a comprehensive Flora of the
areas visited by Sibthorp, i.e. southern parts of present-day Greece and coastal
regions of western Anatolia as well as Cyprus. Three lilies are mentioned in
the Prodromus, viz. Lilium candidum, L. chalcedonicum and L. martagon. All
three had been known to Linnaeus who in Species Plantarum (1753) cited them
from “Palaestina, Syria”, from “Persia” [probably in error], and from “Hungaria,
Helvetia, Sibiria, Lipsiae”, respectively.
In the Prodromus geographical information for Lilium candidum reads: “In
Tempis Thessaliae. D. Hawkins. In hortis Graeciae frequens. Sibth.”. Apparently,
John Hawkins, another wealthy English gentleman who had travelled in Greece
partly together with Sibthorp and partly on his own, had observed this species
growing in the Tembi valley in Thessaly (just south of Mount Olympus) whereas