Lilium auratum, 1862
by Louis van Houtte (1810–1876)
Lilium auratum (山百合, yamayuri, literally “mountain lily”) is one of the true lilies. It is native to Japan and is sometimes called the golden-rayed lily or the goldband lily.
The Englishman who was the earliest collector of lily bulbs in Japan was arguably young John Gould Veitch of Veitch Nurseries, and in 1862 he sent to England the golden rayed lily,
L. auratum, which became touted as the “aristocrat of lilies”. It was allegedly in 1867 that a man named John Joshua Jarmain operating from Yokohama became the first commercial exporter of Japanese lilies, though the species of lily is not clarified. The mint exporter Samuel Cocking of Yokohama also exported lilies from the early 1800s, presumably of the
L. auratum species, which is the local prefectural flower [ja] of Kanagawa Prefecture. Isaac Bunting, another purveyor of plants offered
L. auratum for sale, as seen in his 1885 catalog. [Source:
Wikipedia.]
You can download the antique botanical illustration above as a high-res 6” x 9” @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark
here. Public domain, colours digitally enhanced.
Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
