His brother, Colonel Robert Lilburne, was among those who signed the death-warrant of Charles I. In 1656 he was M.P. for the East Riding of Yorkshire, and at the restoration was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment.
See D. Masson, Life of Milton (iv. 120); Clement Walker (History of Independency, ii. 247); W. Godwin (Commonwealth, iii. 163–177), and Robert Bisset (Omitted Chapters of the History of England, 191–251).
LILIACEAE, in botany, a natural order of Monocotyledons
belonging to the series Liliiflorae, and generally regarded as
representing the typical order of Monocotyledons. The plants
are generally perennial herbs growing from a bulb or rhizome,
sometimes shrubby as in butcher’s broom (Ruscus) or tree-like
as in species of Dracaena, Yucca or Aloe. The flowers are with
few exceptions hermaphrodite, and regular with parts in threes
(fig. 5), the perianth
which is generally petaloid
occupying the two
outer whorls, followed
by two whorls of
stamens, with a superior
ovary of three carpels
in the centre of the
flower; the ovary is
generally three-chambered
and contains an
indefinite number of
anatropous ovules on
axile placentas (see
fig. 2). The fruit is a
capsule splitting along
the septa (septicidal) (fig. 1), or between them (loculicidal), or a
berry (fig. 6, 3); the seeds contain a small embryo in a copious
fleshy or cartilaginous endosperm. Liliaceae is one of the larger
orders of flowering plants containing about 2500 species in 200
genera; it is of world-wide distribution. The plants show great
diversity in vegetative structure, which together with the
character and mode of dehiscence of the fruit afford a basis for
the subdivision of the order into tribes, eleven of which are
recognized. The following are the most important tribes.
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| Fig. 1.—Fruit or Capsule of Meadow Saffron (Colchicum autumnale) dehiscing along the septa. | Fig. 2.—Same cut across showing the three chambers with the seeds attached along the middle line—axile placentation. |
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| Fig. 3.—Corm of Meadow Saffron (Colchicum autumnale). a, Old corm shrivelling; b, young corm produced laterally from the old one. | Fig. 4.—Corm of Colchicum autumnale in autumn when the plant is in flower. k,Present corm. |
Melanthoideae.—The plants have a rhizome or corm, and the fruit is a capsule. It contains 36 genera, many of which are north temperate and three are represented in Britain, viz. Tofieldia, an arctic and alpine genus of small herbs with a slender scape springing from a tuft of narrow ensiform leaves and bearing a raceme of small green flowers; Narthecium (bog-asphodel), herbs with a habit similar to Tofieldia, but with larger golden-yellow flowers; and Colchicum, a genus with about 30 species including the meadow saffron or autumn crocus (C. autumnale). Colchicum illustrates the corm-development which is rare in Liliaceae though common in the allied order Iridaceae; a corm is formed by swelling at the base of the axis (figs. 3, 4) and persists after the flowers and leaves, bearing next season’s plant as a lateral shoot in the axil of a scale-leaf at its base. Gloriosa, well known in cultivation, climbs by means of its tendril-like leaf-tips; it has handsome flowers with decurved orange-red or yellow petals; it is a native of tropical Asia and Africa. Veratrum is an alpine genus of the north temperate zone.
Asphodeloideae.—The plants generally have a rhizome bearing radical leaves, as in asphodel, rarely a stem with a tuft of leaves as in Aloe, very rarely a tuber (Eriospermum) or bulb (Bowiea). The flowers are borne in a terminal raceme, the anthers open introrsely and the fruit is a capsule, very rarely, as in Dianella, a berry. It contains 64 genera. Asphodelus (asphodel) is a Mediterranean genus; Simethis, a slender herb with grassy radical leaves, is a native of west and southern Europe extending into south Ireland. Anthericum and Chlorophytum, herbs with radical often grass-like leaves and scapes bearing a more or less branched inflorescence of small generally white flowers, are widely spread in the tropics. Other genera are Funkia, native of China and Japan, cultivated in the open air in Britain; Hemerocallis, a small genus of central Europe and temperate Asia—H. flava is known in gardens as the day lily; Phormium, a New Zealand genus to which belongs New Zealand flax, P. tenax, a useful fibre-plant; Kniphofia, South and East Africa, several species of which are cultivated; and Aloe. A small group of Australian genera closely approach the order Juncaceae in having small crowded flowers with a scarious or membranous perianth; they include Xanthorrhoea (grass-tree or black-boy) and Kingia, arborescent plants with an erect woody stem crowned with a tuft of long stiff narrow leaves, from the centre of which rises a tall dense flower-spike or a number of stalked flower-heads; this group has been included in Juncaceae, from which it is doubtfully distinguished only by the absence of the long twisted stigmas which characterize the true rushes.
Allioideae.—The plants grow from a bulb or short rhizome; the inflorescence is an apparent umbel formed of several shortened monochasial cymes and subtended by a pair of large bracts. It contains 22 genera, the largest of which Allium has about 250 species—7 are British; Agapanthus or African lily is a well-known garden plant; in Gagea, a genus of small bulbous herbs found in most parts of Europe, the inflorescence is reduced to a few flowers or a single flower; G. lutea is a local and rare British plant.
Lilioideae.—Bulbous plants with a terminal racemose inflorescence; the anthers open introrsely and the capsule is loculicidal. It contains 28 genera, several being represented in Britain. The typical genus Lilium and Fritillaria are widely distributed in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere; F. meleagris, snake’s head, is found in moist meadows in some of the southern and central English counties; Tulipa contains more than 50 species in Europe and temperate Asia, and is specially abundant in the dry districts of central Asia; Lloydia, a small slender alpine plant, widely distributed in the northern hemisphere, occurs on Snowdon in Wales; Scilla (squill) is a large genus, chiefly in Europe and Asia—S. nutans is the bluebell or wild hyacinth; Ornithogalum (Europe, Africa and west Asia) is closely allied to Scilla—O. umbellatum, star of Bethlehem, is naturalized in Britain; Hyacinthus and Muscari are chiefly Mediterranean; M. racemosum, grape hyacinth, occurs in sandy pastures in the eastern counties of England. To this group belong a number of tropical and especially South African genera such as Albuca, Urginea, Drimia, Lachenalia and others.
Dracaenoideae.—The plants generally have an erect stem with a crown of leaves which are often leathery; the anthers open introrsely and the fruit is a berry or capsule. It contains 9 genera, several of which, such as Yucca (fig. 5), Dracaena and Cordyline include arborescent species in which the stem increases in thickness continually by a centrifugal formation of new tissue; an extreme case is afforded by Dracaena Draco, the dragon-tree of Teneriffe. Yucca and several allied genera are natives of the dry country of the southern and western United States and of Central America. Dracaena and the allied genus Cordyline occur in the warmer regions of the Old World. There is a close relation between the pollination of many yuccas and the life of a moth (Pronuba yuccasella); the flowers are open and scented at night when the female moth becomes active, first collecting a load of pollen and then depositing her eggs, generally in a different flower from that which has supplied the pollen. The eggs are deposited in the ovary-wall, usually just below an ovule; after each deposition the moth runs to the top of the pistil and thrusts some pollen into the opening of the stigma.
