LILIES - RHS Lily Group

Amos Perry, the Enfield nurseryman,
G.M. Taylor of Dobbies and R. W. Wallace whose bulb nursery at Tunbridge
Wells was one day to amalgamate with Barr’s.
The names of some additional members were chosen at that first meeting: Sir
William Wright Smith of the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden; the plant collector
W.R. Price; C.H. Curtis, editor of Gardeners’ Chronicle; Fred Stoker, future author
of ‘A Book of Lilies’; R.D. Trotter the RHS Treasurer, and a number of amateur
lily growers – Lt-Col. George Napier; the stockbroker Paul Rosenheim; C. R.
Scrase-Dickens of Coolhurst; Mark Fenwick of Abbotswood; Andrew Harley of
Glendevon; Robert James of St Nicholas; Lawrence Johnson of Hidcote and H.D.
McLaren (later Lord Aberconway) of Bodnant. Council added the names of the
garden designer George Dillistone and George Yeld, the York schoolmaster, who
had been the first President of the Iris Society. The name of Arthur D. Cotton,
who was to succeed Grove as a compiler of the Supplement to Elwes, was
not mentioned at the first meeting but he was present at the second one. The
Committee’s size was fixed at not more than forty.
Such then was the initial membership of the RHS Lily Committee. The
Committee recommended that ‘in order to widen the influence of the Committee’,
some Corresponding Members be added to its number (Council put its foot
down about the co-options and insisted that the term ‘Overseas and Foreign
Correspondents’ be used). There are some discrepancies between the list
suggested in the Committee minutes and that eventually published in the 1932
Year Book; here follow all the names, suggested or final:
Canada . . . . . . . . . .Isabella Preston of the Ottawa Experimental Farm.
USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . T.A. Havemayer of the Horticultural Society of New York,
W.E. Marshall, author of ‘Consider the Lilies’, David Griffiths
of the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry, Carl Purdy, Dr A.M.
Vollmer, William Craig of Boston and A.B. Stout of the New
York Botanic Garden.
France. . . . . . . . . . .E. Debras and the Abbé Souillet.
The Netherlands . .J. Hoog of Van Tubergen’s Nurseries and Ernst Krelage.
Germany . . . . . . . . Alfred Unger of Heidelberg and W. Kesselring of the Darmstadt
Botanic Garden.
Austria . . . . . . . . . .Dr F. Lemperg.
Bulgaria . . . . . . . . . Professor Stoyanoff of Sofia University (The name of Kellerer,
head gardener at the Sofia palace, was also suggested and in
1936 Wilhelm Schacht, presumably Kellerer’s successor, was
invited instead.).
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