Dr. Griesbach is professor emeritus (biology/genetics) from de Paul University, Chicago and renowned worldwide as an avant-garde hybridizer of Liliums. In 1994 he received the E. H. Wilson Award, highest honor bestowed by the North American Lily Society, for outstanding contributions to the genus Lilium. Dr Griesbach did pioneering work in converting normal diploid forms of Gladiolus and Hemerocallis to the tetraploid level and carried out extensive hybridizing within these genera before specializing in Liliums....... . . In 1979-80 two famed cultivars of the legendary Leslie Woodriff...'Black Beauty' (notoriously sterile at the diploid level) and 'White Henryi'...were converted, then several hundred flowers of 4X 'Black Beauty' were pollinated from 4X 'White Henryi'. Five viable seeds resulted from this effort, one of them producing the celebrated 'Leslie Woodriff', still today a popular, imposing lily gracing many gardens. Intercrossing and backcrossing over numerous succeeding generations, and adding converted forms of the species L. regale, L. leucanthum, and several commercially available Trumpet/Aurelian cultivars has resulted in a highly diverse array of stunning hybrid tetraploid garden lilies.