The Tiger Lily (Lilium tigrinum) is a popular garden flower recognized by its bright orange, dark-spotted petals. Many growers notice small, dark structures along the stem and mistake them for seeds. This common confusion arises because the Tiger Lily rarely reproduces sexually like most flowering plants. To understand what appear to be the plant’s seeds, one must examine these unique, small, dark structures.
The Primary Reproductive Structure
The structures most commonly mistaken for Tiger Lily seeds are actually aerial bulblets, known as bulbils. These are small, vegetative clones of the parent plant, essentially tiny bulbs forming above ground. They are the plant’s primary method of self-propagation, especially since many common varieties of the Tiger Lily are sterile.
Bulbils are small, firm, and nearly spherical, often the size of a pea or kidney bean. As they mature, their color deepens, becoming a glossy, shiny black or very dark brown. Their smooth, pebble-like texture feels much more like a miniature solid bulb than a thin, dried seed.
Where to Find the Bulbils
These small, dark structures form at predictable locations along the stem. They develop in the leaf axils, which are the junctions where the leaf meets the main stalk. The Tiger Lily typically produces a bulbil in almost every axil, starting at the bottom of the stem and progressing upwards as the plant matures.
Bulbils begin forming after the flowers bloom and swell throughout the late summer. When fully ripe, they naturally detach from the stem. A mature bulbil will easily fall off with a light touch, indicating it is ready to drop to the ground and begin rooting to form a new plant.
True Seeds Versus Bulbils
While bulbils are the reproductive structure most growers encounter, the Tiger Lily is technically capable of producing true seeds, though this is rare. The common cultivated Tiger Lily is typically a sterile triploid, meaning it has three sets of chromosomes and cannot produce viable pollen or ovules necessary for sexual reproduction. True seeds are generally only produced by fertile diploid or hybrid Lilium varieties.
A true lily seed is significantly different in appearance and location from a bulbil. They are contained within a seed pod or capsule that forms at the site of the flower, not in the leaf axils. Mature true seeds are flat, thin, and papery, often possessing a small, translucent wing for wind dispersal. They lack the dark, solid mass characteristic of the bulbil.