Morphological Characterization of Wild Lilium Species Collected From the Vicinity of the Qin-Ba Mountains, China

The wild Lilium species of the Qin-ba mountains are an exciting source of new gerplasm for introgression into commercial lily cultivars.  Successful implementation of a breeding program requires identification of elite ecotypes as breeding parents.  We recorded 18 morphological traits, including flower number, tepal length and width, filament length, pedicel length, bulb depth, scale length and width, height and diameter of the bulb, plant height, stem diameter, and length and width of the lower, middle, and upper leaves for 5 wild Lilium species (L. duchartrei, L. lancifolium, L. pumilum, L. brownie and L. leucanthum).  Across the five species, we measured these parameters for 40 ecotypes (5-10 sample plants for each ecotype) in their native habitat.  Among the 153 pair combinations of the 18 traits 133 pairs were highly correlated. Through R-type cluster analysis the 18 morphological traits could be divided into five major groups. A formula that uses the 18 traits for identification of the 5 different species in the wild was established.  Validation demonstrated that the formula was correct in more than 98% of the tested wild species.