Interspecific Lily Hybrids with the Ability to Flower Precociously and to Produce Multiple Flower Stalks from Lilium formosanum

Abstract

Lilium formosanum Wallace has remarkable traits such as ‘precocious flowering’ ability, i.e., it reaches anthesis within 12 months from seed germination, with multiple shooting of flower stalks. To verify the possibility of the usefulness of these traits in lily breeding, nine combinations of interspecific crosses (L. formosanum as the seed parent; L. auratum, L. speciosum, L. regale, ‘Lollypop’, ‘Pink Tiger’, ‘Zaza’, ‘Le Reve’, ‘Marco Polo’, and ‘African Queen’ as pollen parents) were carried out with cut-style pollination and ovary-slice culture. Germination was observed in all nine interspecific crosses and 53 hybrids were obtained. Thirty (56.6%) of the 53 hybrids and two self-pollinated progenies of L. formosanum reached anthesis within 24 months from germination through ovary-slice culture. Multiple shooting of flower stalks was recognized in 11 (36.7%) of those flowered hybrids. Four hybrids, the pollen parents of which were Asiatic hybrid lilies with colored flowers, expressed ‘precocious flowering’ ability, multiple shooting of flower stalks, and entirely colored flowers simultaneously. These results suggest the possibility of breeding new types of cultivars with triple favorable traits from the cross between L. formosanum and Asiatic hybrid lilies with colored flowers.