Lilybulb.com - by B&D Lilies®
First in Garden Lilies... Since 1978'Push Off' - Asiatic Hybrid Lily
Lily Bulb Description
[After considering this lily again and again, we have found the name to be more and more distasteful and decided that we will not offer this lily for sale. It appears on our website only because it is in our spring 2012 print catalog. Upon mailing of our fall catalog, this listing will be removed. - Bob & Dianna Gibson]
Flower Description: Bred in Holland, this is a name that we would not have chosen had it been one of our lilies. In Holland, unlike here in the US, a breeder is not allowed to select his own name without government approval. Instead, he submits "suggestions" to a government board and they in turn decide on a name. 'Push Off' as a verb means either "to leave" as in a boat - or - "to do drugs, specifically heroin" as in "Let's ‘push off’ before we go to the party". Hopefully sometime during 2012 the regulatory board in Holland will change the name of this lily removing the hopefully unintended reference to heroin use - which is free to addicted users in Holland - as the flower deserves better. If so, we will offer it under the new name. If not, it is off to the compost pile.
We trial new varieties of lilies often before they have been named and it has increasingly been becoming a problem for us when we make selections for the garden and then the name is finally selected. We try to write descriptions for the lilies you find in our fields and our catalogs, which includes something that ties that lily to the name. We recently disposed of a lily that had been named for a resort in the Italian Rivera. Why? When searching on the internet for that resort, the first thing that came up on their site was “click here to see our girls”. It was more than just a resort and not a place we wanted to be associated with, or tied to our website.
Another lily that was just released this year and has already been picked up by some of the jobbers (those that just buy from brokers to resell and who often settle for whatever is cheap and available) was very demeaning to women. Dianna and I spent years teaching our children about guilt through association. We are not into the promotion of prostitution, the demeaning of women, or the use of drugs, even if legal in other countries. We will leave that for the jobber companies. Ours is a family business and we see no need to compromise the values we grew up with or those we have passed along to our children.
Flower Description: Bred in Holland, this is a name that we would not have chosen had it been one of our lilies. In Holland, unlike here in the US, a breeder is not allowed to select his own name without government approval. Instead, he submits "suggestions" to a government board and they in turn decide on a name. 'Push Off' as a verb means either "to leave" as in a boat - or - "to do drugs, specifically heroin" as in "Let's ‘push off’ before we go to the party". Hopefully sometime during 2012 the regulatory board in Holland will change the name of this lily removing the hopefully unintended reference to heroin use - which is free to addicted users in Holland - as the flower deserves better. If so, we will offer it under the new name. If not, it is off to the compost pile.
We trial new varieties of lilies often before they have been named and it has increasingly been becoming a problem for us when we make selections for the garden and then the name is finally selected. We try to write descriptions for the lilies you find in our fields and our catalogs, which includes something that ties that lily to the name. We recently disposed of a lily that had been named for a resort in the Italian Rivera. Why? When searching on the internet for that resort, the first thing that came up on their site was “click here to see our girls”. It was more than just a resort and not a place we wanted to be associated with, or tied to our website.
Another lily that was just released this year and has already been picked up by some of the jobbers (those that just buy from brokers to resell and who often settle for whatever is cheap and available) was very demeaning to women. Dianna and I spent years teaching our children about guilt through association. We are not into the promotion of prostitution, the demeaning of women, or the use of drugs, even if legal in other countries. We will leave that for the jobber companies. Ours is a family business and we see no need to compromise the values we grew up with or those we have passed along to our children.
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