Dear members: I'm not a botanist, so I can't have the final say, but some facts please. The most recent book is "Lilies" by Ed A. McRae, and on P146-7 he describes L. lancifolium: "Lilium lancifolium Thunberg 1794. Long known as Lilium tigrinum Ker- Gawler 1810. Commonly used as a food plant, said to taste like potatos." "Many tiger lilies in cultivation are triploid" "The double flowered variety flore-pleno Regel 1890". Variety fortunei Standish 1866 ..is usually covered with woolly hairs on the stem and buds." (A picture of this was just posted in the lilium-L list). Variety Splendens Leichtlin 1870 is the most widely distributed of the triploid varieties." "The diploid forms ...have 2N=24 chromosomes) and hybridize readily with..such as L amabile, bulbiferum, L davidii, L. leichtlinii var maximowiczii, L maculatum or L xumbellatum. Diploid forms have been found at seven sites on Tsushima Island and on the nearby coast of Kyushu." "Variety flaviflorum Makino 1933 a yellow-flowered diploid..." >>Does anyone know anything about a *yellow* form of the tiger lily? >In short, as far as I'm concerned, there is not and never has been such a >thing as a yellow tiger lily. So Jim disagrees with Makino--probably safe, since I presume he has been dead for years. >First of all, let's get one trivial nuisance out of the way. Mass >distribution catalogs for years have sold something they call a yellow >tiger lily. This is in fact a yellow flowered 1c Asiatic hybrid (or maybe >several hybrids). Not trivial--outright fraud on the part of many lily sellers. Almost anything may be called a "tiger" lily, regardless of whether or not there is any tigrinum ancestry. Buy from lily specialists, not mass- market catalog deals. Many years ago I grew what were purported to be diploid tigrinum, and tigrinum var. flaviflorum. I see no reason to doubt their authenticity, but when they didn't come back, I felt no need to replace them. I've run out of time for now, but crossing 3N lilies with 4N lilies usually results in lots of 3N, and some 4N, with very few 2N. Jim, did you do chromosome counts? Ken