Lilium lancifoliumThunb.

Tiger lilytiger lily

WFO wfo-0000677845 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lilium lancifolium, photographed by naturewatchwidow
fig. a naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-01-22 / obs. 176741712
Lilium lancifolium, photographed by natepow
fig. b natepow, CC0 1.0 / obs. 154519363
Lilium lancifolium, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. c Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151861798
Lilium lancifolium, photographed by robinlanark
fig. d robinlanark, CC0 1.0 / obs. 148221022
Lilium lancifolium, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. e mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146103863
Lilium lancifolium, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. f mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145553915
Lilium lancifolium, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. g mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 143602047
Lilium lancifolium, photographed by WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁
fig. h WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 142404024

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 11 botanical countries

Regions where Lilium lancifolium is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Korea, Kuril Is., Manchuria, Primorye, Qinghai, Sakhalin, Tibet China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanManchuriaPrimoryeQinghaiSakhalinTibet Korea
Native distribution of Lilium lancifolium, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Korea KOR
Kuril Is. KUR
Manchuria CHM
Primorye PRM
Qinghai CHQ
Sakhalin SAK
Tibet CHT

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 407 in flower of 517 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Lilium lancifolium observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 407 of 517 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,006 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.6 °C -6.5 °C 4.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.5 °C 27.4 °C 31.2 °C
Annual rainfall 712 mm 1,155 mm 1,830 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 53 mm 193 mm 310 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,006 research-grade observations of Lilium lancifolium that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 13 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Lilium lancifolium unranked album Hovey
  • Lilium lancifolium unranked melpomene Hovey
  • Lilium lancifolium var. densum W.Bull
  • Lilium lancifolium var. flaviflorum Makino
  • Lilium lancifolium var. fortunei (Standish) V.A.Matthews
  • Lilium lancifolium var. splendens (Van Houtte) V.A.Matthews
  • Lilium leopoldii Baker
  • Lilium lishmanni T.Moore
  • Lilium tigrinum Ker Gawl.
  • Lilium tigrinum var. erectum G.F.Wilson
  • Lilium tigrinum var. fortunei Standish
  • Lilium tigrinum var. plenescens Waugh
  • Lilium tigrinum var. splendens Van Houtte

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.