SPRINGHOUSE FARM JOURNAL
By Heather Lovett
"How do you deal with lily foliage after the flowers have bloomed?" a woman asked me the other day, adding "I got tired of looking at it and cut it all back." This isn’t a problem for me, since deer or rabbits have long since eaten any lilies I had in my garden, but I knew what she meant. As with daffodils and other bulbs, lily foliage should be allowed to mature throughout the summer to ensure blooms the following year. After awhile, though, most of us lose our patience and give in to the urge to tidy up.
She then asked if I knew the name of a late-blooming pink lily that grows out of the ground on a stalk without leaves. "That’s the lily for me!" she said. "No leaves to fuss with!" Her description rang a bell, and what popped into my head was "naked lady" (naked because of the lack of foliage), but I couldn’t remember the plant’s proper name. I promised I’d do some research and get back to her.
For obvious reasons I didn’t want to search the Internet using the phrase "naked ladies," and I assumed correctly it turns out that most catalogs and garden books would list the plant under a more genteel name. Instead, I flipped through a few bulb catalogs hoping the pictures would jog my memory.
It wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for: magic lily (Lycoris squamigera), also known as resurrection or surprise lily. "Autumn’s most fragrant surprise!" exclaimed the catalog copy. "In fall, it suddenly reappears, sending up two-foot flower stalks with gorgeous clusters of large, fragrant blooms. Great in the vase!"
Lycoris (pronounced lye-ko-ris, with the stress on the first or second syllable) is a small genus of flowering bulbs native to China and Japan. Its members include the lovely and unusual spider lily (L. radiata), so-called because the flowers have long, spidery stamens that protrude far beyond the petals.
Most Lycoris species (including spider lily) are not hardy this far north, although they can be grown as pot plants and brought indoors in winter. Magic lily, however, is the apparent exception. If I can believe my catalogs, the bulbs are hardy from zone 5 to zone 9 and grow "easily in most garden soils, forming an impressive grouping over time."
Magic lilies do have foliage strap-like leaves that emerge in the spring and grow to a height of two and a half feet but these leaves die down completely in early summer. The flower stalks appear almost a month later, bearing large, trumpet-shaped blooms clustered at the top, much like amaryllis. In fact, L. squamigera was once identified as Amaryllis Hallii, a botanical name now out of favor. (Lycoris and amaryllis remain somewhat related in that both belong to the Amaryllidaceae family.)
It’s fitting that a plant with a sly midsummer disappearing actas well as a sudden, dramatic finalewould be named after a beautiful actress famous for intrigue. Mistress to both Mark Anthony and his rival in battle, the poet Gaius Cornelius Gallus, Lycoris was clever (or beautiful) enough to win her freedom from slavery. Known as Volumnia in real life, with the stage name Cytheris, she was given the poetic Greek name Lycoris (meaning "twilight") in the four books of verse Gallus wrote to her.
As for the (less poetic) "naked lady," L. squamigera is not the only plant to have picked up this slightly naughty nickname. Others include Amaryllis belladonna, a very similar bulb from South Africa; Zephranthes atamasco, the lovely pink or white "zephyr lily" native to the American South; and fall-blooming Colchicum, which is much like, and often confused with, autumn crocus.
Of the three, only colchicums will survive our winters without protection. Like magic lilies, many colchicum species bloom "nakedly" without leavesand also, incidentally, without a stem, although they rise from a stem-like tubular part of the flower. The blooms look like large crocuses but can be distinguished by their six stamens as opposed to three. These charming plants have also been called meadow saffron, naked boys, naked nannies, andmy favoriteupstarts.
Colchicums are named after the ancient country of Colchis on the Black Sea, a region now part of the Republic of Georgia. In Greek mythology the enchantress Medea made her home there, and gathered colchicums growing in the fields to use in her magic potions. (The corms and seeds contain colchicine, a powerful drug used in the treatment of gout and arthritis.)
So it seems that both magic lilies and colchicums are associated with enchantment or trickery. This may work to my advantage, for I discovered while doing all this research that both plants are reputed to be distasteful to deer and rodents. I have added them to my fall bulb list, and in a year or two I hope to have lots of naked ladies and upstarts appearing in my garden as a welcome, late-season surprise.
Lycoris and Colchicum sources:
McClure & Zimmerman, P.O. Box 368, Friesland, Wis., 53935. (800) 883-6998. (L. squamigera, L. radiata, A. belladonna, many Colchicum species.)
Wayside Gardens, 1 Garden Lane, Hodges, S.C., 29695. (800) 845-1124.(L. squamigera, L. radiata, a few Colchicum species.)
Heather Lovett is a resident of Hopewell Township

