"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Category: exploring place

Stargazer Lilies (Plus Four)

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From Lilies by Naomi Slade:

“Certain lilies need no introduction and pretty, fragrant Star Gazer is a household name….

“The original Star Gazer lily was bred in California in the mid-1970s by Leslie Woodriff, a botanical magician and ‘the father of the Oriental hybrid lily’. Here he worked with species lilies with the aim of creating an upward-facing flower rather than a nodding one until a chance genetic mutation produced Star Gazer — and with this he struck gold.

“The flamboyant open flower is made up of petals that are hot pink, with a white picotee edge, crimson polka dots and a central stripe that slides into lime-green nectary guides at the heart of the flower. The central stamens are very prominent. The scent is powerful, strong and spicy; some love it, but others can find it completely overwhelming.”

From “Green River” by William Cullen Bryant in Three Centuries of American Poetry edited by Allen Mandelbaum and Robert D. Richardson:

I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream
For in thy lonely and lovely stream
An image of that calm life appears….

Hello!

The flowers featured in the first eight photos below are some especially vibrant stargazer lilies that I found at Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens in July. There weren’t very many still in bloom — not so much because their bloom time had passed, but because of beatings they’d taken from multi-day torrential rains that are so much more frequent here in the southeast. Those still upright — as is the stargazer way — were in pretty good shape, so I cast them on black to hide the mass of broken stems that filled the backgrounds behind them.

The last four photos — the “plus four” of this post’s title — may be a white variation of the stargazer, but I’m not too sure… so I guess I’ll just call them Plus Four Lilies. Weird that I only ended out with four photos (a few more might have made it easier for me to identify them) but as I took these four shots I got distracted by some nearby tiger lilies dancing for my attention… and then forgot about these white ones. Sorry, Lilies!

🙂

Thanks for taking a look!

Small Batches of Tiger Lilies (2 of 2)

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From Notes on Lilies and Their Culture (1879) by Alexander Wallace:

“[Lilium] includes some of the most remarkable species in the whole vegetable kingdom — species distinguished alike by the nobility and elegance of their port, their beauty, and the size and diversity of colour in their flowers. Amongst them are a few of the oldest denizens of our gardens…. The beauty of their flowers has attracted the attention of horticulturists to these plants for a good many years….”

“[The] number of species known during the first few years of the present century had almost doubled since Linnaeus wrote his last general treatise. The impetus had been given, and from that moment the results became more and more apparent. From Japan, a land which may be regarded as specially favoured in respect of these plants, an English seaman, Captain Kirkpatrick, who touched there in 1804, brought two new species, one of them the beautiful Tiger Lily… which by its hardihood and the brilliancy of its cinnabar-red blooms, spotted over with deep reddish brown, has become a common garden flower….”

“Can anything be more pure or graceful for harvest homes than the stately Tiger?”

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photos of tiger lilies (Lilium lancifolium) from Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens. The first post is Small Batches of Tiger Lilies (1 of 2). As I mentioned in the previous post, some of these tigers were dancing when I took their pictures… can you see them moving?

Thanks for taking a look!

Small Batches of Tiger Lilies (1 of 2)

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From Bulbs and Tuberous-Rooted Plants: Their History, Description, Methods of Propagation and Complete Directions for their Successful Culture in the Garden, Dwelling and Greenhouse (1893) by C. L. Allen:

“[The Tiger Lily] is, when well grown, one of the most noble and showy of all the species, and well worthy a place in every collection. The type grows about four feet high, and, in good soil, will produce from ten to fifteen bright scarlet flowers, with numerous small black spots. Notwithstanding its stately form and gorgeous display, it is classed with weedy plants, because of its rapid increase and ease of cultivation; whereas, in gardens of any considerable extent, it should have a prominent place and be confined to it.”

From The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson:

Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,
Leaping like leopards to the sky,
Then at the feet of the old horizon
Laying her spotted face, to die;
Stooping as low as the kitchen window,
Touching the roof and tinting the barn,
Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, —
And the juggler of day is gone!

Hello!

It was an exceptionally breezy day when I took these photos of tiger lilies (Lilium lancifolium) at Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens, but I did manage to freeze-frame enough of them to create two small batches of photos, for this post and the next one. As determined as they were to evade my camera, they were not successful.

It’s almost hard to believe that the unopened buds shown in the first two photos unfold to reveal the tiger lily’s large and complicated structure. The tiny spots throughout the flower petals — which, surprisingly, create some challenges when masking the images in Lightroom to remove the backgrounds — register to our eyes as black dots, but in the photo editor they are read as combinations of purple and magenta. By increasing the saturation on purple and magenta, you can get the dots to appear as if they have some bumpy texture — something that probably wouldn’t have been apparent to you, if I hadn’t just pointed it out.

🙂

Thanks for taking a look!

Summer Daylilies (3 of 3): Red, Orange, and Yellow

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From “History of the Daylily” in The Illustrated Guide to Daylilies by Oliver Billingslea:

“The modern daylily is a highly evolved plant, the ancestors of which were species native to the temperate parts of central and northern Asia. According to the American Botanical Society, the genus consists of some 13-15 species of evergreen, semi-evergreen, and dormant herbaceous perennials found growing along the margins of forests, in mountainous areas, marshy river valleys, and meadowlands in China, Korea, and Japan, and occasionally into Manchuria and eastern Siberia….

“The ancient Chinese, in particular, used the species for food and medicine. The flower buds were palatable and nutritious, and the root and crown often served as an effective pain reliever…. Because its flowers were bright and cheerful, the daylily also came to symbolize for the ancients an outlet for grief, its primary effect an emotional one….

“Two species brought to America were the orange H. fulva, commonly known as the ‘roadside’ or ‘homestead’ lily, and H. flava, the ‘Lemon Lily’ of early twentieth century gardens.”

From Colour in My Garden (1918) by Louise Beebe Wilder:

“Among the most lovely and useful of yellow flowers are the Day Lilies (Hemerocallis). Their colour is very pure and fine, and runs the scale from mild lemon colour to strong fuscous orange. The flowering season of the different varieties covers a period of nearly three months, and few plants grow with such hearty good will in all sorts of positions….

“Yet I seldom see any save the common Lemon Lily (Hemerocallis flava) made any great use of in gardens, and this, though truly lovely, is usually relegated to out-of-the-way places where more capricious things have scorned to grow. The Orange Day Lily (Hemerocallis fulva) we commonly see decorating the roadside near to some old garden, but its colour is magnificent and it is well worth a place within the garden.”

Hello!

This is the last of three posts featuring photos of daylilies I took at Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens earlier this summer. The first post is Summer Daylilies (1 of 3): Burgundy and Yellow; and the second post is Summer Daylilies (2 of 3): Double-Double Orange-Orange.

The orange daylilies below are the “single” variation of the double Hemerocallis fulva that I showed in the second of these three posts.

“Fuscous” — from the second quotation above — is a fun new word, don’t you think? I’d never heard it before, though perhaps it’s commonly used in Victorian-era botanical culture (or not). It means “dark” or “dark-hued” so let’s use it in a sentence. Here’s the Atlanta weather for today, which prompted me to increase the brightness on all these photos before posting them:

It was a fuscous and stormy day.

Pretty cool, huh?

Thanks for taking a look!

Summer Daylilies (2 of 3): Double-Double Orange-Orange

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From “Daylilies by the Bouquetful” in One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell:

“Often I wonder how gardeners fared before the great surge of modern daylilies, as these are a mainstay of the summer garden. Most varieties last three weeks in bloom; that is, a well-grown clump with many flowering stems will show flowers for that long. And there are early and late kinds, so that the season is a good two months or even longer if very early and very late kinds are chosen. Daylily flowers range in size from one and a half to eight inches, on stems one to six feet high.

“Still, it is a mistake to think the daylily will take care of itself like a weed, as the wild Hemerocallis fulva does. That is the burnt-orange kind you see along alleys and at abandoned sites, where it persists along with chicory or dandelions….”

From Colour in My Garden (1918) by Louise Beebe Wilder:

“In Nature, broadly speaking, we find that red and scarlet and yellow are rare, given to us as stimulants, as vivid experiences. They are confined to sunset and sunrise skies, to autumn foliage and to flowers; while the ‘restful and reparative’ colours — blue, green, and violet, as revealed in the sky, the sea, the distance, and the great green setting of grass and trees — make up the beautiful commonplace of our daily seeing….

“Surely there is a lesson here. The constant perception of broad masses of emphatic, exciting colour would prove severely taxing, yet do we most surely need them here and there to bring out the quality of neutral colour, and to arouse the immobile beauty of the garden to glowing life.

“Yellow, orange, and scarlet flowers show to greatest advantage in full sunshine.”

Hello!

This is the second of three posts featuring photos I took of daylilies at Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens earlier this summer. The first post is Summer Daylilies (1 of 3): Burgundy and Yellow.

I’ve always referred to this particular daylily as “double orange” (or sometimes “double-double orange-orange” because it’s so large) — but discovered today that it is actually a variation of one called Hemerocallis fulva as you can also see if you do an image search for “double hemerocallis fulva” on Google.

I took a few pictures of similar daylilies last year when I hadn’t yet learned that daylilies are not actually lilies, so those older photos are mixed in with true lilies on this post: Lilies on Black Backgrounds (3 of 10). Ah, well, at any given time you only know what you know; and, as Bart Simpson would say: “Mistakes were made!”

Thanks for taking a look!