Taipei, July 21 (CNA) A native Taiwanese lily species that had disappeared for 96 years prior to 2011 can now be purchased in the form of seedlings, thanks to a multi-year propagation program, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said Wednesday.

The plant, Lilium callosum Siebold & Zucc., was widely considered to be extinct in the wild after it was last seen in 1915, Chang Chia-chi (張珈錡), a researcher at the COA's Taiwan Seed Improvement and Propagation Station (TSS), said at a press conference.

In 2011, however, researchers found five of the plants on a slope on Binhai Mountain in Miaoli's Tonghsiao Township, but when they returned to the site later that year, the plants were gone, Chang said.

After they alerted others in the botanical community, a researcher at National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) was able to find three scales from the plant's underground bulbs, according to Chang.

Using plant tissue cultures, a team led by NCHU professor Chang Chen (張正) began propagating the lillies, and in 2020, they transferred their techniques to the TSS to begin growing them on a larger scale, she said.

Soon after joining the efforts, the TSS was able to supply around 1,000 seedlings to designated people, schools and government institutions, thereby building a foundation for conservation of the species, Chang said.

Now that the plant has been cultivated in greater numbers, the TSS has decided to make seedlings available to the general public, at a price of NT$200 (US$6.69) each, she said.

While the seedlings can be sent by mail, Chang said, she would recommend collecting them directly at the TSS' headquarters in Taichung, in order to maximize their chances of survival.

(By Yang Shu-min and Matthew Mazzetta)