Luther Burbank's California native lily breeding experiments spanned nearly 20 years in the late 1800's and involved hundreds of thousands of field grown plants in or very near Sunset Climate Zone 14. Burbank's success is frequently viewed as the inspiration for Griffiths' later, more focused lily breeding program. The notion that Burbank acquired all his hundreds of thousands of field grown plants from Carl Purdy and staged his entire lily breeding program is mildly entertaining. I have never before encountered a Luther Burbank lily hybridization denier. The interest in California native lilies is definitely on the rise in the San Francisco Bay area and I regularly run into lily enthusiasts who are successfully growing numerous species. As with so many California native bulb plants worth growing, drainage is always the indispensable key to success and "horticultural perlite" is seldom part of the solution. Many species have spectacular flowers, unbelievably high bud counts, amazing fragrance, wide variability, and exquisite glaucous blooms covering their wavy foliage. It's always an incredible site to see magnificent flowering plants in the wild towering above one's head. Good "garden plants?" Definitely not, but worth growing nonetheless. Nathan At 04:52 PM 4/7/2015, you wrote: >I would be very wary of any early twentieth >century claims that the western North American >lilies were being successfully grown as garden >plants. Why? Because Carl Purdy ran a brisk >trade in collected plants. A lot of the >gardeners I know seem to think that "easily >grown" means the same thing as " readily >replaced". The typical bulb catalog is filled >with plants which many gardeners mistakenly >regard as "easily grown" when what they mean is >"easily replaced". Just look at what happened >to bulb culture here in the United States during >the quarantine years early in the twentieth >century.There was one very successful exception: >David Griffiths' hybridization of lilies which >purportedly were derived ultimately from L. >humboldtii x L. pardalinum. Those plants existed >by the thousands (maybe tens of thousands) at >the peak of Griffiths' program. And they >disappeared shortly after Griffiths' death >except for certain selected clones, some of >which survived for a few more decades. Jim >McKenneyMontgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA >zone 7, where spring is quickly approaching its >most beguiling.  > >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/