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

Category: oakland cemetery

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (3 of 4)

 , , , , , , , , , , 0

From “Belamcanda” in Perennial Gardening by Michael Ruggiero: 

“Both species in this genus (also called leopard flowers) are native to China and Japan. B. chinensis is becoming popular in this country as an ornamental, for its shiny blackberrylike fruits as much as for its orange-spotted flowers; once finished, the flowers twist up tightly….

“B. flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ is a wonderful smaller (10-inch) cultivar with the typical blackberrylike fruit….

“Both are fairly easy to grow and are unusual additions to summer and early fall flower borders. Group several plants together to get a telling display. Blackberry lily grows best in full sun positions, in well-drained, reasonably fertile soil…. Planting may be done in spring or fall, but newly planted stock should be protected with a winter mulch. Propagation is most satisfactory by seed sown in spring, either out of doors or indoors at about 70-80° F. Germination will take 2-4 weeks….

“Some gardeners prefer to divide the rhizomes in spring or early summer. Iris borer may attack the rhizomes with devastating effect; dig and destroy as soon as damage is seen; do not compost the foliage to prevent overwintering of borers. Leaf scorch causes an unsightly browning of the irislike leaves. Do not deadhead, or the attractive black glossy fruits will not form. Self-seeding is not a problem.”

From “Lodestone” in Of This World: New and Selected Poems 1966-2006 by Joseph Stroud:

I lie in a hammock in the slow hours
of a summer day, summer at last
in the high country, summer in the air,
in the light, in the poems I’m reading,
poems like deep jade pools of snowmelt
under a summer sun, poems like
whorls of agate. There’s a drift of pollen
through the forest, sifting through
the pines and cedars, a fine gold powder
drifting like the crushed ash of sunlight.
In the seep on the hillside the first
rein orchids appear, the night-blue larkspur,
leopard lilies….

Hello!

This is the third of four posts with photos of Iris domestica, where we’ll spend some time looking at one of its cultivars, whose appearance and growth patterns are quite different from the plants I shared in the first two posts, Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4) and Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (2 of 4).

Since the origins of this cultivar’s name — Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’ — are hard to pin down, we can just enjoy the fact that the plant was given this happy little moniker. The excerpt I included at the top of this post — from the book Perennial Gardening by Michael Ruggiero, published in 1994 — refers to Leopard Lilies by their earlier name Belamcanda, calling the yellow cultivar Belamcanda flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ and calling the more frequently planted orange cultivar Belamcanda chinensis. So we know that ‘Hello Yellow’ has been around for at least thirty years, before the two plants were subsequently determined to be variants of the same species and their names were changed to Iris domestica and Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’. The original Belamcanda names actually strike me as more precise than the newer ones — since Iris domestica could now be used to include both cultivars — but these things sometimes happen when plant names change over the years. Belamcanda flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ even captures more of the yellow cultivar’s physical characteristics by not only including the color of the flowers, but also including its fan-shaped leaves — that’s what “flabellata” means — whose distinctive appearance you can observe in the first five photos in the galleries below.

In my first post in this series, I mentioned that Hello Yellow appeared to have been bred to eliminate the spots that had given rise to the plant’s “Leopard Lily” common name, a name that crossed the boundaries between plant life and animal life. Since then, I got to puzzling about that — as one does — which led me to wonder if there were cat-leopards that originally had spots but those spots had disappeared over generations and time. Researching that led me to this interesting article The Black Leopard Has Secret Spots, which describes how the ancestral remnants of spots on this cat’s sleek black coat can be revealed by photography, especially infrared photography.

If you look at the lead photo in that article, however, you can see that it doesn’t actually require infrared photography to reveal the hidden spots. Instead, the right lighting conditions — in that case, sunlight filtered through surrounding trees and shrubs — achieve a similar effect. With that in mind, I knew that I took some of my Hello Yellow photographs when the sun was behind clouds, which would have resulted in lighting a lot like that of the leopard photograph. Here, for example, is one of those photos…

… where you can find Hello Yellow’s spots if you look closely. Follow the petals of the frontmost flower from their edges to the center, and you’ll encounter what may look like bits of pollen, but these are actually spots whose color has been altered from Iris domestica’s original deep purple or black to a shade of yellow-orange that’s slightly darker than the rest of the petals. These color variations are only evident in filtered sunlight like this; you won’t see them in the photos that I took when the sun was out.

But there’s more! Here we compare Hello Yellow to the orange spotted cultivar and can see something else. Notice how spots are distributed among the flower petals on the orange blossoms, then take a look at those same sections of the petals on the yellow variant:

You will see, in this comparison, pale yellow circles and circular texture variations among Hello Yellow petals that are distributed in the same patterns as the dark spots on the orange flowers. These, too, are remnants of the plant’s original spotted appearance, where the plant’s colors have been altered through selective breeding to shift the overall petal color from orange to yellow, and simultaneously reduce the dark spots to shades of yellow. So, as it turns out, the common names Leopard Lily or Leopard flower still work for Hello Yellow after all!

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (2 of 4)

 , , , , , , , , , 2

From “The Genus Belamcanda” in The Iris by Brian Mathew: 

“It is generally accepted that this interesting genus contains only one species…. The one frequently grown species is B. chinensis, easily recognized by its flower which has six equal reddish-spotted perianth segments, not differentiated into falls and standards as in an Iris. Furthermore, the three styles are slender like those of Crocus sativus, with a terminal stigma, not expanded and petaloid like those of irises in which the stigma is a flap on the underside of each of the three style branches. Apart from this, the habit of growth is similar to some irises….

“In cultivation in Britain Belamcanda presents no problems if given reasonably good soil with plenty of humus in sun or semi-shade. It does not like a very warm dry position and should have plenty of moisture in the growing season. I find that it is completely hardy in Surrey but is not a long-lived plant. It is however easily raised from seed and flowers in two or three years from sowing….

“The inflorescence is widely branched with about three to twelve flowers about 4cm in diameter. These have six equal perianth segments which are a yellowish or orange-red colour mottled with red or blackish-purple spots. They have hardly any perianth tube at all and the pedicels are jointed just below the ovary so that the whole flower quickly falls off from this point if it is not fertilized. The three style branches are slender, not petaloid….

“Unlike irises, the capsules split open and the three locules curl outwards leaving the central axis exposed. The large blackish seeds stay attached for a considerable time before falling, this feature having given rise to the common name of Blackberry Lily. Belamcanda chinensis is a native of Japan, China, eastern Russia in the Ussuri region, Taiwan and northern India. It occurs in sandy meadows near the sea, in moist scrubland and in shady places from sea level to about 2000 metres altitude.”

From “Farm Gate” by Uys Krige in The New Century of South African Poetry, edited by Michael Chapman: 

Blood-red the aloes flank
the winding road.
As if aflame with leaping sparks each fire-lily glows.
But nothing, nothing stirs… only
a breeze that flows
that seems to pause and waver there
the grass-seed grows.

Above, the blue, blue sky;
and far below, the falling stream
drifts through the orchards with
a flash of green.
And no sound breaks the hovering peace
of this still mountain scene….

The gate stands in
a maroola’s shade.
A wholeness in me, harmony
and no bitterness, no hate.
I lift the catch… and in my heart
open a gate.

Hello!

This is the second of four posts with photos of Iris domestica that I took at Oakland Cemetery during the summer and early fall. The first post is Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4), where I describe my annual trips to photograph this plant, detail some of its unique characteristics, and provide a three-part illustration of its lifecycle.

Below I show several more batches of orange-spotted Iris domestica — the variant that honors leopards and their markings by calling them Leopard Lilies or Leopard Flowers (among other common names) — where I have zoomed from wider shots showing the plants’ surroundings to macro photos that reveal the colors and intricate structures of one or two individual blossoms. With close-up photos like these, you could read through the excerpt describing Iris domestica‘s botanical architecture (published in 1990, when it was still called Belamcanda chinensis) at the top of this post, follow the links to Wikipedia definitions for any unfamiliar terms, and easily identify different parts of the plants.

In the first five photos below, you’ll see batches of Iris domestica thriving near some of Oakland’s large Yucca plants, and in front of a field of ferns in the last four photos. Placements like these are not only visually interesting — providing both color and texture contrasts, as well as a sense of depth — but also show how Iris domestica thrives in the company of other plants while being surrounded by their horizontal spread. Iris domestica emerges from the ground on a single stem even among such plants, then splits into separate branches with multiple smaller stems (pedicels) hosting clusters of flowers — or inflorescences — that will all stand tall against their backgrounds as long as the flowers continue blooming.

Thanks for taking a look!

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4)

 , , , , , , , , , 7

From “Blackberry Lilies” in Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden:

“There is a speckled Asian irid that offers something of an analog to the American tigridias. The old botanical name for the plant is Pardanthus (‘leopard flower’). In the South these rich orange, purple-spotted blossoms have long been familiar as blackberry lilies, for the round, black seeds that persist clustered like blackberries after the fat pods open. Most garden literature refers to these perennials as Belamcanda chinensis, a Latinized version of their Asian name, balamtandam, and their home country, China. Recently, however, DNA-wielding botanists have assigned this distinctive plant the more pedestrian title Iris domestica.

“This flower was once common in gardens, but is now more often seen as an escape, growing on damp, acid soil. Like many other deserving plants, this easy-growing irid has yielded its place to more obvious blooms. Jefferson had it at Monticello, where he knew the colorful blossoms as Chinese ixia.

“The ephemeral flowers, appearing on slender stems above short fans of matte green foliage, continue over a long summer season. After the pretty flowers fade, the capsules enlarge to form the handsome ‘blackberries,’ which persist over winter and as cut decorations for autumn vases. The fleshy roots develop offsets that may be divided for increase, and the seeds, when sown, often flower the first season.

“In addition to the common purple and orange of the wild Iris domestica, nurseries provide a pale yellow selection, ‘Hello Yellow,’ and several hybrids with the Mongolian I. dichotoma.… Usually sold as pardancandas or candy lilies, they come in a wide range of exotic, warm-colored pastels. All grow readily on damp ground and make showy, but short-lived perennials. They grow easily from seed and mix cheerfully in borders of white phlox, yellow daylilies, or blue mistflowers….”

From “A Poem About Icebergs and Planting” by Susan Ingersoll in The Backyards of Heaven: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry:

let there be
blackberry lilies,
starry mountain bluets…

let the cycle of renewal
rumoured at another season
be complete

now the earth will turn again
toward the light

let the bee balm return, and the bee,
and the honeysuckle
and the sun

these seeds are shiny black
like shot, messages
sent underground to the future,
that august should see…

belamcanda chinensis

in the name of faith in
the name of magic

Hello!

This is the first of four posts with photos of Iris domestica — a plant with many fun common names like Leopard Lily, Leopard Flower, Blackberry Lily, Candy Lily, Freckle Face, Butterfly Lily, and Fire Lily — that I took at Oakland Cemetery during the summer and early fall. I first discovered roving packs of Iris domestica at Oakland in 2022 (see Leopard Flower Variations), returned to photograph them in 2023 (see Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (1 of 3)), and again returned to photograph them in 2024 (see Iris Domestica Fireworks (1 of 2)).

Across those years, I experimented quite a bit with rendering their colors in different tones, varying white balance to demonstrate how that shifts orange and yellow between warmer and cooler shades, and isolating the flowers on black backgrounds to show off the structure of their petals, stems, and leaves. Each new batch of the plants gave me an opportunity to try new photographic treatments but also to learn more about them, as I uncovered fascinating stories about how they were introduced at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello gardens in the early 1800s; how their scientific name changed from Belamcanda chinensis to Iris domestica just twenty years ago; that they were determined to be members of the Iris family and are not lilies at all; that there are cultivars whose appearance contradicts the common names Leopard Flower and Leopard Lily by having eliminated the dark spots that established the plant’s “leopard” nickname to begin with; and — from the Scott Ogden book excerpt above — that Iris domestica behaves as an escaped plant impervious to human intent to constrain its spatial growth as it ventures out beyond any borders. This last point is evident in how I’ve seen the plants make their way around Oakland, from a couple of defined clusters at the boundaries of several garden pathways that I encountered in 2022, to randomly appear in new locations from one year to the next.

One of its cultivars — Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’ — made its debut at Oakland just this year, appearing in this memorial scene as a crowded mass of flowers whose density increased as the summer went on:

I was out photographing daylilies on the morning I came across these, and almost passed them by because from a distance they looked like yellow daylilies, which I’d already photographed abundantly. Once I realized they were an Iris domestica variant — the flower shape reveals their identity — I spent plenty of my shoot time photographing these from various distances and angles to study their characteristics and observe more about how different they are from the plants that produce spotted orange flowers. Over this post and the next three, then, we’ll look at two sets of photos featuring plants with orange petals and leopard spots, and two sets of photos featuring Hello Yellow, while we explore their botanical similarities and differences in some detail.

June and July are peak bloom times for most Iris domestica variants, and in the past, I’ve shared their photos during the summer — but I held off this year to capture the plant’s full growth and reproductive cycle from buds and blooms, to seed capsule generation, then finally to the production of “blackberries” represented in the “Blackberry Lily” common name.

The first five photos below this paragraph show the orange-spotted variant during its blooming period (I took these photos toward the end of June), where even here you can see some fully opened flowers, some that have not yet opened, and a few whose flowers have twisted into the tight spirals that are one of Iris domestica’s distinctive features. This range of development states is common to many flowering plants and represents a timed blooming that occurs sequentially over several days to present multiple opportunities for visiting pollinators. The flower twisting that Iris domestica produces, though, is quite uncommon, and represents a transitional stage for this plant, where the flower is closed to pollinators because of its reduced visibility. The twisted flower — which is quite stiff to the touch — also serves as a protective mechanism for the seed packet that will grow to eventually push the desiccated flower off the stem.

By the middle of July, the same plants have entered the second stage of their lifecycle, where all of the flowers have been replaced by seed capsules. While not especially photogenic (three photos seemed like enough to show this stage), the capsules are botanically and biologically significant, as their blackberries are growing inside. Some of the capsules are quite large — up to an inch in length — and as fat as a thumb. The third photo emphasizes their size, but also shows a tiny “pin” at the top of each one, from where the twisted flower has completely dropped off. The green capsules continue to grow for several more weeks, through the end of summer and into early fall.

Fast forward to October (I took these photos just last week, on October 6), and now we can see what has happened since the seed capsules have dried up, split open, and gotten discarded: the berries of Blackberry Lily fame appear as clusters at the ends of many stems, somewhat protected by what remains of the capsule and the dried leaves where the flowers once extended from the stems ends. The berries will be picked up by flying seed dispersal agents like birds, or scattered by the wind, or brushed off the plants by humans or other animals passing by — to find their way into the ground and enable the plants to spread into their next seasonal cycle, taken root and germinating wherever environmental conditions are suitable.

Here in the Southeast, the appearance of Iris domestica berries is one of the first indicators that autumn has arrived, even before frosty temperatures kick in and other plants, trees, and shrubs start producing the colors of fall. And for those of us already thinking ahead to the upcoming winter holidays, the contrasting blue-black colors of the berries surrounded by yellow-gold leaves might trigger early thoughts of Christmas decorations, especially Christmas picks and sprays whose designs are often based on the shapes and colors of plants like Blackberry Lilies, and whose cuttings fill our mantles, windows, tables, and vases from November until the new year.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

An Amaryllis Family Gathering (4 of 4)

 , , , , , , , 5

From Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden:

“The most popular of the spring growers is Lycoris squamigera, an old garden selection known as the magic lily. One rarely finds a more beautiful flower possessed of such an undemanding disposition. It’s nearly ideal for gardens in the middle and upper South, and even into the cold climates of the Midwest. On both sandy acid soils and heavy alkaline clays, L. squamigera thrives.

“Sometime after the Fourth of July, rainfall triggers the thick scapes of surprise lilies to bolt upward from the ground. They rise swiftly, in four or five days expanding to crowns of succulent, lilac-pink buds. The clustered blossoms open to look like small amaryllises, shimmering with lavender highlights on their broad rounded petals.

“Like the triploid Lycoris radiata, this strong-growing species enjoys an extra set of chromosomes, which fuel unusual vigor. Genetic evidence suggests that these were acquired through hybridization….

“Lycoris squamigera reportedly came to America with a certain Dr. Hall of Bristol, Rhode Island, who grew the flowers in his garden in Shanghai, China, prior to the American Civil War. Several other spring-growing lycoris have made their way to North America, but none approach Lycoris squamigera in prominence or widespread adaptability….

“Lycoris incarnata is occasionally offered as well; its rose blooms are accented by electric-blue petals…. [They] have gray-green spring foliage and produce flowers in late summer along with Lycoris squamigera….”

From “The Metaphysical Garden” in Collected Poems (1930-1973) by May Sarton:

It was late in September when you took me
To that amazing garden, hidden in the city,
Tranquil and complicated as an open hand,
There among green pleasances and descant of fountains,
Through walled paths and dappled loggias
Opening to distant trees,
We went conversing, smoking, often silent,
Our feet cool in sandals, nonchalant as the air.

It was at the end of September, warm for the season.
Nothing had fallen yet to bruise the grass.
Ripeness was all suspended,
The air aromatic and fresh over sun-drenched box.

Critical as Chinese philosophers,
We performed the garden by easy stages:
Should we move toward shade or toward sunlight,
The closed dark pool or the panoplied fountain?

Clearly each path had a metaphysical meaning,
Those rustic steps, that marble balustrade.
It was late in September when time,
Time that is not ours,
Hid itself away.…

Hello!

This is the fourth of four posts with photos of Amaryllis family plants that I photographed during the summer. The previous posts are An Amaryllis Family Gathering (1 of 4), An Amaryllis Family Gathering (2 of 4), and An Amaryllis Family Gathering (3 of 4).

The series features photos of Amaryllis family members Crinum bulbispermum, Lycoris squamigera, and Lycoris incarnata. The first two are well-known and common historical garden plants, while the last — Lycoris incarnata, or the Peppermint Spider Lily — is a bit more mysterious but nevertheless delightful to have encountered and photographed.

I’m posting this on the last day of September, so I was glad to find a poem — “The Metaphysical Garden” by May Sarton — that seems to capture the sense of exploring a historical garden on one of those days marking the transition from summer to fall. I excerpted just the opening four stanzas; but it’s much longer than that and you can read the whole poem here, if you’d like.

Thanks for taking a look! See you in October!

An Amaryllis Family Gathering (3 of 4)

 , , , , , , , 6

From “Lycoris” in Sub-Tropical Bulbs and Plants by Wyndham Hayward:

“Lycoris are becoming fashionable and more popular with every succeeding season.

“For years Lycoris Squamigera has been a lovely garden flower in the North, blooming before the leaves appear in late summer, and marked by an exotic beauty of violet-rose Amaryllis-like blooms in good-sized umbels.

“In the lower South, Lycoris Radiata, which… is commonly known as the ‘Red Spider Lily,’ is a well-known plant in every dooryard through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. It does well in North Florida, but seems to like an alkaline soil, so usually has to be replaced in Peninsular Florida every few years.

“One of our fortunate achievements of the past year is the importation of a modest stock of the handsome Lycoris aurea, long grown in old gardens around St. Augustine, where it is called the Golden Hurricane Lily and blooms in early Fall, during the Caribbean ‘tropical storm’ season. It is a rich golden yellow, with crinkled petals in a strangely enchanting and exotic umbel which opens practically all of its 5 to 10 flowers at the same time or in rapid succession. This is one of the choicest bulbs of all horticulture and was painted by Redoute, floral artist to the Empress Josephine, and it appears in his famous ‘Liliacees,’ of 1815 or so, although it really belongs to the Amaryllis family….

“We also offer three rarities, Lycoris alba, a creamy white and pinkish novelty, not yet positively identified, L. squamigera var. purpurea, a lovely thing for the North and Lower South as well, being quite hardy, and Lycoris incarnata, as received from China.

“We are not sure what this last will turn out to be.”

From “Lycoris” in A Southern Garden: A Handbook for the Middle South by Elizabeth Lawrence:

“Hall’s amaryllis, Lycoris squamigera, is a hardy bulb from Japan. The naked scapes come up in summer, and the wide, grey, narcissus-like leaves do not follow until January. The spot where the bulbs are planted should be marked so that they will not be disturbed when nothing shows above ground. The clumps should be left alone until they cease to bloom, and then lifted and divided after the foliage dies away in late spring. They bloom indefinitely in poor soil, increasing very slowly in the borders. From four to seven fragrant, opalescent flowers are borne in umbels on tapering, thirty-inch scapes.

“The first fades as the last opens so that as many as six may be out at a time. The petals are like a changeable silk in Persian lilac with tints of violet, tints that are repeated in the drooping flowers of the wild bleeding-heart. The lacy foliage of the bleeding-heart softens the effect of the bare scapes. The scapes appear about the middle of July and last into August.

“Lycoris incarnata comes from central China. It blooms a little later than Hall’s amaryllis, the first scapes usually making their appearance late in July, but sometimes not until August. The flowers are smaller, the scapes shorter (to two feet) than those of the Japanese species, and the bulbs multiply faster and bloom more freely. There are from six to eight (mostly eight) flowers to an umbel. The segments are very narrow, very pale (almost white), keeled with tourmaline pink and tipped with blue. The edges are crisped. The filaments and style are daphne red. The striped buds open in succession, the first flower lasting until all are out. An umbel in full bloom is very lovely.”

Hello!

This is the third of four posts with photos of members of the Amaryllis family that I took during the summer. The first post is An Amaryllis Family Gathering (1 of 4) and the second post is An Amaryllis Family Gathering (2 of 4). For this four-part series, I photographed Crinum bulbispermum, Lycoris squamigera, and Lycoris incarnata. The last two — commonly known as Surprise Lillies and Peppermint Surprise Lilies — were plants I was previously unfamiliar with, that made their debuts at Oakland Cemetery only recently. This third post, and the next one, include photos of the Peppermint version of the Surprise — whose striped appearance is even evident in the unopened flowers, where they look a lot like pieces of Christmas candy.

It’s always fun to come across a new-to-me species or genus of plants. The Lycoris plant that I see most often in the southeast, one you can typically buy at local garden centers and see at public gardens, is the richly colored and complex-looking Lycoris radiata, usually called the Red Spider Lily. Oakland also has some of the Red Spider Lilies, which can be challenging to photograph creatively because of the large number of anthers that emerge from the base of its fist-sized flower, curve outward toward the center, and make it difficult to find a good focal point. The saturated red color doesn’t help, especially in bright light (which they prefer), contributing to the camera’s inability to find a combination of exposure and depth of field that doesn’t just create a flat, two-dimensional image. But as one of the most frequently planted members of the Lycoris genus, it’s easy to find information about Red Spider Lilies, which I’ll take advantage of if I find some in bloom and photograph them this fall.

Surprise Lilies (like those in the first and second post) are also relatively easy to research, as they’ve been known and used in gardens for over a century. Peppermint Surprise Lilies, on the other hand, are much harder to find in botanical literature. As an unscientific indicator of the difference, there are about 700 references to Surprise Lilies (by either their botanical or common names) among the Internet Archive’s 3.7 million Books to Borrow, but only about 20 for the Peppermint version.

Among my own gardening and botany books, the only author who mentioned the Peppermint Surprise Lily at all was Elizabeth Lawrence, which is why I included an excerpt from her book A Southern Garden: A Handbook for the Middle South at the top of this post. It also seems to be true that the genetics of the Peppermint Surprise Lily have not been well-studied, nor has the genetic relationship between the two been fully researched. Surprise Lilies hail from Japan and Peppermint Surprise Lilies hail from China — which doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not close relatives; they still could be, despite the geographic distance between their natural origins. My first excerpt above — from a flower distributor’s flyer that was produced in 1948 — hints at the mystery surrounding the Peppermint Surprise Lily and its bulbs, describing them as rarities and noting: “We are not sure what this last will turn out to be.”

So perhaps it’s also a mystery how it came about that Oakland’s horticulturalists chose the Peppermint Surprise Lily to add color to some bland spaces between shrubs and trees, for late summer and early fall when many other flowers have blown away. While Lycoris (and Crinum) are both plants whose variants have appeared in historical or heritage gardens for many decades, this specific plant’s appearance here is unusual. It will be interesting to see how they progress over the next couple of years — most Lycoris are quite hardy and environmentally adaptable — since they will likely propagate and create even larger spreads of striped color that contrasts beautifully with the more muted tones of the Lycoris squamigera.

Thanks for taking a look!

An Amaryllis Family Gathering (2 of 4)

 , , , , , , , 0

From “The Surprise Lily” in Beautiful at All Seasons: Southern Gardening and Beyond by Elizabeth Lawrence: 

“In midsummer, when heat and drought have drained all color from leaf and blossom — in spite of all of the city water that is poured on them — the surprise lily rises mysteriously from the ground. One day there is nothing, and the next there is a tall, pale stem that grows to about three feet and then produces, at the top, a circle of flowers of the most luminous and delicate pink….

“The surprise lily is not really a lily. It is a Lycoris, as lovely as the nymph it was named for, and it belongs to the amaryllis family. It is sometimes called Hall’s amaryllis for the New England doctor who brought it back from a Japanese garden nearly one hundred years ago….

“Although it has been in gardens so long, and is one of the easiest bulbs to grow, the surprise lily has never become common…. The bulbs do their growing in late winter when the wide, gray-green leaves come up. The time to plant new ones, or to dig and divide old clumps, is when the leaves die. The bulbs need not be dug unless you want to increase the supply. They will go on blooming indefinitely in the same spot. The flowers bloom whether they are watered or not, even in the driest season, and no spraying is required….

“I think the other reason that surprise lilies are so little known is that their specific name, squamigera, is so long and so ugly. It means scaly, which sounds equally unattractive, and means that with a hand lens small scales can be seen in the throat of the flower — a fact of no interest to the gardener. Nevertheless the Latin name will be needed when the bulbs are bought, for they will be listed by the bulb growers as Lycoris squamigera.”

Hello!

This is the second of four posts with photos of an Amaryllis family gathering that I attended during the summer. The first post is An Amaryllis Family Gathering (1 of 4) where I introduced the three plants I photographed for this four-part series: Crinum bulbispermum, Lycoris squamigera, and Lycoris incarnata.

In this post, we see a second planting of Lycoris squamigera, located in a separate area of Oakland Cemetery than those I showed you previously. While the environmental conditions were similar — filtered sunlight for plants growing among larger greens — these either got more sun or were a little older, as most of the plants had produced multiple stems topped with flowers in bunches. They are, however, otherwise identical — and they were mixed among plantings of Lycoris incarnata, which you can see in the backgrounds of the first three photos. This landscape of pine bark and stubs of grass — which in previous years was mostly barren — is now punctuated with the alternating colors of the Surprise Lily and the Peppermint Surprise Lily, creating a fine, fetching scene.

While I was working on the Lycoris squamigera photos, I noticed that many of the flower petals had a bit of blue at their tips, almost as if someone had dabbed the edges with a watercolor brush dipped in blue. Because I took the photos in low light, I thought it might be an artifact present in the image, something that I see occasionally with low light and any Sony camera I’ve used. I ended up leaving the blue color intact rather than trying to remove it, though, when I discovered this botanical drawing by Matilda Smith (who I wrote about in an earlier post about Regal Lilies), which shows the same blue color in similar locations.

I cropped the drawing a little to make it fit in this post better, but you can see the full version on Flickr, or see it in a Curtis’s Botanical Magazine issue from 1897 here. I thought it was fun to confirm that my color choices were accurate using an image published 128 years ago from one of that era’s preeminent botanical artists.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Surprise Lily is one of this plant’s common names, a name that recognizes how the plant drops all its leaves and becomes a dormant stalk before it produces any flowers. But it apparently it has other surprises, as the excerpt above suggests: unlike most bulb plants that are typically divided and transplanted at the end of their blooming season, Surprise Lilies should actually be split up between the time they drop their leaves and the time they start blooming. I had never encountered this unusual maintenance sequence before, which made me wonder if Lycoris has still more surprises in store.

Thanks for taking a look!