LILIES - RHS Lily Group

80
Erythronium
In April 2007 the Lily Group had an erythronium week-end, visiting
both Greencombe in Somerset and Knightshayes Court in Devon. Here,
Brian Mathew records some random notes on a fascinating genus.
HE RHS ACCOLADE OF AGM (Award of Garden Merit) is a useful contribution
Ttowards
the assessment of a plant’s value as a ‘good garden plant’. Of
course there are drawbacks as with any such scheme, the main one being the
variability of local conditions. While an AGM plant should be known to thrive
in most regions of the country there may well be places where it will languish
due to adverse climatic or soil conditions. A few years ago there was a trial of
Erythronium at Wisley, a worthy attempt to assess which were the outstanding
ones from a garden point of view. Taking only aesthetics into account one would
probably state that all species are beautiful, although one might hold back in the
case of the very rare but minute E. propullans or the prolifically increasing but
shy-flowering E. americanum (nice leaves, though!). Others, notably the higher
altitude western North American species, are tricky to cultivate in many parts of