yea. . i bought a very healthy asiatic 2 years ago. . seperated it up today and about 40 small bulbs and 6 1-2" bulbs were there.
last year i didn't split it. and i should have. asiatics can be very productive. if you don't want them i'm sure more than a few people here have room for more plants.

Isn't Triumphator a hybrid, trumpet and oriental maybe? Orientals don't tend to multiply fast, but I think trumpets do, so it is probably normal if it is happy. If you decide to trade some of your extras, I would love to get a triumphator. I have a few nice lilies-at least I do if they survive this late frost. A couple of my lilies were up quite a bit, & the foliage is totally brown. Those were the asiatics mostly though, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these aren't totally killed.

Hi ngraham & indica,

Yeah, indica, I knew Asiatics did that (and multiply by leaf axil bulbils as well). Great if you have the space for them and large gardens so you can wait to separate them. (Unfortunately - not my situation.)

Triumphator is a Longiflorum - Oriental hybrid. Longiflorum (Easter Lily) is sometimes referred to as a trumpet - but it has its own classification.

While my trumpets (Regale and Leucanthum) multiply fast - the offsets they send up are pretty small. This looks more like what orientals do when they're stressed (send up a bunch of relatively large shoots instead of a main shoot). If it had happened to only one bulb - I would have figured it was that. But this happened to every single one of the Triumphator bulbs I planted last spring. Plus they have a strong main shoot - so clearly the bulb is healthy (and then some!)

I have another LO that doesn't do this. (I wish it did - its been discontinued by the dutch growers and is very hard to find.)

If this weather ever lets up I'll dig at least one of them up to see what's going on. If they are separable I'd be glad to send you some ngraham.

Anyone with Triumphator have this happen (or not have it happen)? I'm wondering if this is standard behavior - or just a weird blip.

-Helen

Here is a link that might be useful: NALS - Lily Types

Hi Helen,
I did not grow 'Triumphator' yet, will do it this year, so I can not give you a feedback on it. It seems that it is fast to multiply indeed, because Brent&Becky's sells it at a remarkably low price. I also received it as a substitution from the B&D. Unlike all other substitutions, they sent me 3 'Triumphator' bulbs instead of 1.
Is other LO Lily you mentioned 'Elegant Lady'? If so, Dutch Gardens has her for sale. Just in case...
Elegant Lady at Dutch Gardens

Yeah Alina, I was referring to Elegant Lady (an LLO). I like it because it blooms early like a Longiflorum and has a Longiflorum shape with a beautiful pearly pink color. Much prettier "in person" than in its photos. A lot of the LO's have a more spreading shape intermediate between Longiflorums and Orientals and bloom later. Elegant Lasy bloomed June 2 for me last year. Since I don't grow asiatics (I like scent) it's my first lily each season. LO's are also nice because they don't follow the sun as much as other lilies.

Thanks for the tip. I did order some from Dutch Gardens this season. The only other seller I found is the Lily Nook in Canada, and in the US you'd have to pay for the phytosanitary certificate as well as shipping. The Dutch Garden bulbs were in pretty bad shape - soft and sort of shrivelled. It's possible they are "left overs" from the year before. But, I planted them in pots with nice potting soil (they looked like they needed some extra TLC) and they have sprouted. So alls well that ends well. I haven't ordered from Dutch Gardens before so I don't know if this is normal for them or if its just because these bulbs were the remainder of a discontinued lily.

I ordered another LO, "pink heaven" from Brent and Becky's which looks promising and is reported to bloom early. I'll see how that goes.

-Helen

Helen, how tall does Elegant Lady get?

Deanna

Hi Deanna,

Elegant Lady only gets to 3' tall. The shorter height works well combined with other lilies since it blooms earlier (except for asiatics). I put it in front of my (6+' tall) pale pink oriental "Aruba" without worrying that it would obscure the view.

The only problem was that the bloom seasons were so far apart that there was a rather long bloomless time in between. Last fall I added a row of the dark pink Trumpet lily "Midnight" in between them. Midnight should be a little shorter than Aruba and is a mid-season bloomer. So I *should* have a succession in bloom and height as the season progresses. (I'll have to wait to see how that works out.)

I'd go ahead and order them if you're interested since I don't know if it will be available after this season. The first season it might bloom a little later since it has to "catch up" but will still bloom much earlier than the orientals.

-Helen

I have both Triumphator and Elegant Lady. Both of these lilies have multiplied readily in my gardens.
Elegany Lady has to be one of my favorite early surprises. It's one of the earliest to bloom and having it next to the deck, the scent is outstanding. I think I bought it 3 years ago from Brent & Becky's. When I split them up last fall, I had over twice as many. I have some later flowering orientals behind them, I think one called Time Out, extending the season. Neighboring it, is a beautiful tree peony. Elegant Lady and the tree peony are very complimentary.

Helen,
'Elegant Lady' bulbs that I received from Dutch Gardens are also small and dehydrated. Maybe, they are old. Other Lilies I got from them (Double Oriental mixture) look absolutely similar, although they sell them for the first time this year, so they can not be "left overs". I remember now that I ordered 'Elegant Lady' after you said that she is very pretty.

Magnolialover, you must have got your Elegant Lady from Brent and Beckys the same time as I did. When Brent and Becky's didn't list them for sale the year following I e-mailed them and they told me that their Dutch supplier was no longer growing it.

I wish my Elegant Lady multiplied as rapidly as my Triumphator - I should be jealous! My Triumphator was in an established garden that had just been heavily amended so maybe it is just "happier". I amended the Elegant Lady garden last fall but being a fairly new garden it was pretty heavy clay to begin with. Now that I know that it will multiply well under the right conditions I'm going to have to give it more attention. Thanks for the info.

The bulbs I got from Dutch Gardens are coming up well Alina - though the tip of one got frozen off in that cold snap (bummer!). So, yours should be OK once you've given them some TLC. At least they weren't real expensive. I think it will be worth your while, Elegant Lady really is a very pretty lily and as Magnolialover reminded me, it has a beautiful almost "tropical" scent. I think you'll like it a lot.

-Helen

hld6, I think if you amended your soil, even a little bit, to allow for some better drainage, you would see Elegant Lady multiply. The scent is especially lovely in the morning and evening, when the air is just a touch cooler. That and they seem to have survived our cold snap unscathed (down to 18 degrees), which I can't say about every lily that was up at that time.
Definitely place these somewhere near walkways to enjoy the scent. I just can't wait to smell that again. In part sun, they held their blossoms a long time too.