“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….”
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.…
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.
“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.”
“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.
