Shipwrecked. Nerine sarniensis, Guernsey Lily, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Nope. It's not originally from Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, as its name suggests, nor is it from the Cape of South Africa, as is often claimed. But our pretty Lily hails from Japan.
It was first mentioned by Jacques-Philippe Cornut (1606-1651) who saw it flowering in the garden of Jean Morin at Paris on October 7, 1634. He calls it Narcissus japonicus rutilo flore. About a quarter of a century later - in 1657 - the Scottish botanist Robert Morison (1620-1683), who was then working in the botanical gardens at Blois in France, writes that he saw it in the same gardens. Moreover, he relates how this Nerine came by the name 'Guernsey Lily'.
It seems that an East-India Trading Ship - uncertain, he says, whether Dutch or English - returning home from Japan - had been wrecked shortly before 1657 on the snaggy rocks of the Channel Islands near Guernsey. Out spilled those Japanese Lily bulbs only to sprout in bright profusion on Guernsey's sandy coasts. Hence the vernacular name.
It seemed to me unlikely that that ship would have been English if it came from Japan. Since 1641 only the Dutch and Chinese were allowed to trade with Japan. So I checked the records I could for shipwrecks of Dutch ships plying from Japan to Europe on the Guernsey Coast until 1660. It would have been nice to find one... But none...
That our Lily also grows in South Africa is not strange for it's by way of the Cape that many Dutch East Indiamen rerturned home from Japan; in these years of the seventeenth century some six or seven laded ships a year.
Shipwrecked. Nerine sarniensis, Guernsey Lily, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Nope. It's not originally from Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, as its name suggests, nor is it from the Cape of South Africa, as is often claimed. But our pretty Lily hails from Japan.
It was first mentioned by Jacques-Philippe Cornut (1606-1651) who saw it flowering in the garden of Jean Morin at Paris on October 7, 1634. He calls it Narcissus japonicus rutilo flore. About a quarter of a century later - in 1657 - the Scottish botanist Robert Morison (1620-1683), who was then working in the botanical gardens at Blois in France, writes that he saw it in the same gardens. Moreover, he relates how this Nerine came by the name 'Guernsey Lily'.
It seems that an East-India Trading Ship - uncertain, he says, whether Dutch or English - returning home from Japan - had been wrecked shortly before 1657 on the snaggy rocks of the Channel Islands near Guernsey. Out spilled those Japanese Lily bulbs only to sprout in bright profusion on Guernsey's sandy coasts. Hence the vernacular name.
It seemed to me unlikely that that ship would have been English if it came from Japan. Since 1641 only the Dutch and Chinese were allowed to trade with Japan. So I checked the records I could for shipwrecks of Dutch ships plying from Japan to Europe on the Guernsey Coast until 1660. It would have been nice to find one... But none...
That our Lily also grows in South Africa is not strange for it's by way of the Cape that many Dutch East Indiamen rerturned home from Japan; in these years of the seventeenth century some six or seven laded ships a year.