Fluke or not, lily makes quite an impression
ASK a lily question and you’ll likely get a lily answer.
So how did Robin Allison manage to grow a 1mtall lily, laden with unusually large blooms?
‘‘I don’t know,’’ he said. The St Kilda resident said he was not a ‘‘greenthumbed’’ competitive gardener — the beautiful bloom was grown by accident rather than by good gardening skills.
‘‘We don’t even know what the name of the lily is. All we know is that it’s some sort of oriental lily.
‘‘We bought it as a bulb at Pak’n Save, put it in the garden with a bit of cow manure, weeded around it, and this is the result of it.
‘‘It’s about a metre high and the flowers are about 30cm in diameter.
‘‘I think this is just a fluke.’’
Mr Allison’s stepgranddaughter Lilirose van Heezik (7) was intrigued by the flower.
‘‘It’s bigger than my head, but it’s not as pretty as me,’’ she joked.
Otago Lily Society secretary Margaret Muir said lilies of this kind usually grew up to 18cm in diameter.
‘‘Thirty centimetres is quite big. It’s probably quite unusual to find one that size, but it’s not unheard of.’’
She believed the moist, warm weather around Dunedin over the past couple of months had contributed to the extreme size of the blooms.
‘‘And the cow manure certainly would have helped — especially if it was aged well.’’