A New Hybrid Lycoris Cultivar: Nanshan

The genus Lycoris Herb., belonging to the family Amaryllidaceae, was established by Herbert in 1819, with Lycoris aurea designated as the type species (Herbert 1819).Currently, this genus includes more than 30 species, distributed primarily across the temperate and subtropical regions of East Asia, ranging from southwestern China to Japan and the Korean Peninsula (Zhang et al. 2024).The Yangtze River Basin of China serves as the distribution center for Lycoris germplasm resources, with endemic species accounting for nearly 80% of the total (Ji and Meerow 2000).Lycoris species, as bulbous ornamentals, were introduced to Europe as early as the 18th century.This is evidenced by the fact that L. aurea and Lycoris radiata were named and placed within the genus Amaryllis in 1788 (L'H eritier de Brutelle et al. 1788).American horticulturists began hybridization breeding work with Lycoris in the 1930s and 1940s (Culpepper 1940).However, as a result of limited knowledge of Lycoris characteristics at the time, the success rate of hybridization was low.According to Caldwell (1958), William Wood conducted hybridization experiments in 1941 using Lycoris traubii as the maternal parent and L. radiata as the paternal parent, obtaining progeny with flower color and form similar to the maternal parent, which was named Lycoris woodii.This is considered the first successful instance of interspecific hybridization in Lycoris (Caldwell 1958).