"Mary Fisher" wrote in message
t...
Some nearly forty years ago a dear friend, now dead, gave me a lily bulb
(or whatever). It regularly produced a few large purple flowers. I've no
idea what it is apart from that, it's just known as 'Nana Rowe's Lily' and
we're very fond of it.

Last year was a poor year for many things in the garden and we noticed
that the lily developed a very broad, flat (ribbon-like) stem. It was
almost as though there were several adjacent but thin stalks fused
together. Many little bulbs grew at the top of the stem but didn't come to
anything.

The same has happened this year but in seemingly ideal conditions for many
of our plants (thank goodness for the freezer!) the lily has flowered -
lots and lots of small purple lily flowers.

Is this a known condition, is it fatal, can the plant be restored to
normal and does anyone know what might have caused it? We don't want to
lose it although we realise that everything has a limited life ...

I've taken pictures which I can post on alt.binaries.pictures.gardens or
send here as tinypics, if anyone's interested.

TIA

Mary

The problem you describe is called 'fasciation'. It can be caused by frost,
mechanical or insect damage ... plus a few unknowns. It is not usually
fatal. Possibly, if an insect caused the fasciation, it could introduce a
virus (which might be fatal), but I've never heard of fasciation causing
death in a plant. As far as I know there's no cure. In a shrub, it can be
cut out, but not in a lily. Perhaps you could propagate the lily from the
bulb, as an 'insurance policy'?

Spider