Salvaging the Lilies?

I have recently come into possession of a HUGE # of packaged Oriental lilies (16-18) that are suffering from various traumas - many have stems which have begun to elongate and get leaves - many have broken stems - and some have not begun to get leaves but tips of stems are mushy yet can be cut back to a nice firmness. For the most part the bulbs themselves are husky, healthy and firm.

If I was to plant these out, would they be viable, and shoot a stem and bloom NEXT year or are they a lost cause altogether?

Plant them, what do you have to lose? :) If you don't, you're just going to throw them away, so heck, plant them and give them a chance. :)

Yes most likely they'll be okay next year..
The elongated ones will most likely still bloom this year..

You can plant the bulbs upside down and they'd still find a way...LOL
Their pretty tough...

I'd cut the mushy stems off right down to the bulb and there's a slight chance that they may send up a whole new shoot....They want to grow and reproduce...

I would expect some would make it up this year, and (most of) the rest next year. But I doubt that any flowers that they would want to produce would be worth growing to fruition. They would likely be small and at least somewhat deformed if not bordering on grotesque. If it were me, and I saw bud(s) coming, I would snip them off for a better display next season.

I forgot about some lilies from last year's spring co-ops. I found them this past fall, still in bags, so of course most were rotted and mushy. (They had been there for months) Depressed, I wishfully/foolishly salvaged the few I thought would make it and threw the hopeless, mushy ones in the compost pile.

A couple of days agoI was walking across the compost pile and I spotted 3 inch lilies sprouting from under last falls leaves!!! I couldn't believe it. I can't wait to see what they are because I'm buying that kind from now on. I can't even remember all of the lilies that come up the first year I buy them and then never return. I don't know what they are because I never see them again. But these... For me to not even try to salvage them, they must have been pretty bad. Now they are front and center in my flower bed!!

Good luck and I bet you have a great return on your investment!

All the Lily scales that fall off can form all new lily bulbs..
So never throw them away..just stick them in the ground...
it'll take 2-3 years for them to mature though...

I also had a similar experience as 3gardeners. And this was even with a species L. lanknogense! I had dug the bulb one fall because the plant just didn't seem to flourishing. The bulb turned out to be half discolored and mush. Well, for some reason, I replanted it anyway in its intended new home (without cleaning it up at all!).

It actually came up the next year!

Unfortunately, being the wanderer that lankongense is, it came up a 1.5ft from where the bulb was planted, and was so small that I though it was a weed and pulled it. Only then did I discover the miraculous resilience of that bulb.