Water lily

“ The sun rises; the white petals bend together, and, rocked on the parent pool, the Victoria regia sleeps.
But as night draws on again the royal lily awakes. Now it is in its perfection; the perfume is more subtle; the petals take a flush of the palest pink; it rocks on the water and queens it through the night. And so with a few waking and sleeping nights and days, the royal lily’s life is done. [62] When the splendid blossoms and the vast green leaves have perished the seed boxes or pods of the plant rise above the water and ripen, and the Indians call them water maize, and eat them. ”

“ There was also a splendid water-lily—with very broad leaves and large flowers of pink and white colour—the seeds and the stalks of which Karl knew to be edible; as he had read of their being used for this purpose by the poorer people in the country of Cashmeer. The lily in question, viz. the Nelumbium speciosum, grows plentifully in the lakes of the far-famed valley so named. ”

“ They grow up year after year through the placid waters, unfolding their blossoms of spotless purity to the silent stars, and after a short while, disappear, to return at another favorable season. The American Water Lily, Nymphæa odorata, has flowers of a yellowish-white, and an odor that is peculiar and pleasant. The size of the flowers averages three to four inches across. This is by no means the only aquatic lily, for we have in cultivation quite a number of other choice and striking species quite different in leaf and flower from N. odorata. ”

“ Gardeners, taking advantage of a wild flower's natural tendency to develop petals from stamens and to become "double," are able to produce the magnificent roses and chrysanthemums of today; and so it would seem that the water lily, which may be either self-fertilized or cross-fertilized by pollen-carriers in its present state of development, is looking to a more ideal condition by increasing its attractiveness to insects as it increases the number of its petals, and by economizing pollen in transforming some of the superfluous stamens into petals. ”

“ She looked pale, mysterious, like a lily, drowned, under water, he thought. ”

“ The rose looked at her when the sun came upon them that morning, but the lily did not raise her head; she was too full of sorrow to lift her face to the sun, and by and by the rose saw that she was drooping lower and lower, so she spoke to her.
"Lily," she said, leaning closer to her, "raise your head and let the sun cheer you. You will die if you do not open your petals and get the light and air."
But the poor lily was past caring for sun or air; her petals were limp and her stalk withered. ”

“ They have all flowered well, yet some are only thirty inches high, while others tower to the height of nine feet!
The golden-rayed lily does not show its flower-buds until the stem is almost fully grown. ”

“ There was but one spike of blossoms in 1895 when we first saw it. Next year it produced one solitary flower, but since that period it has entirely disappeared.
Why this lily has never become wild in England is not very obvious, for though it never seeds in our Island, it very rapidly increases by off-sets formed round the bulbs, and hundreds of these must be thrown away yearly.
Perhaps it is that the lily is not really hardy in our climate, and though it will flourish when tended in the garden, it is unable to hold its own in the strife with our native plants. ”

“ One of the commonest is a lily like a palm-tree, and another equally abundant is a lily like a tall flax. A third is a tree-dweller, a luxuriant mass of drooping blades, resembling sword-grass. A fourth is a black-stemmed wild vine, a coiling and twining parasite of the forest, familiarly named supplejack, which resembles nothing so much as a family of black snakes climbing about playfully in the foliage. Another, even more troublesome creeper, is no lily but a handsome bramble, known as the bush-lawyer, equipped with ingenious hooks of a most dilatory kind. ”

“ You must needs see them before Passion Week when the gardeners cut and send them to a large hungry place called down the line, where, in prairie churches of tin and pine and sod, the Eastertide worshippers consider the lily and sing songs about death and life.
Not an inch of space is lost in the long lines where, tall and lissome, the stalks bend and curtsy to the passer-by. The glory of the lily is short-lived, for always they are cut off in maturity. The message they give is not one of prophecy and resurrection as the writers have ever taught. ”

“ But by the tenth century the Church had commenced to adopt the pre-Christian employment of the lily as the symbol of purity, and the rose gradually took the lily’s place as the flower of heavenly bliss.
The lily of sacred art is the lilium candidum, sometimes called the Madonna lily, or the lily of Saint Catharine. It is said to be a native of the Levant, but appears to have spread with Roman civilization throughout Europe. The suggestion of abstract purity is arresting and direct. The stalk is straight and upright, the leaves narrow, plain, almost austere. ”

“ If you know the Crioceris, you may name as a lily the plant which she devastates. It will not perhaps be the common or white lily, but some other representative of the same family—Turk's cap lily, orange lily, scarlet Martagon, lancifoliate lily, tiger-spotted lily, golden lily—hailing from the Alps or the Pyrenees, or brought from China or Japan. Relying on the Crioceris, who is an expert judge of exotic as well as of native Liliaceae, you may name as a lily the plant with which you are unacquainted and trust the word of this singular botanical master. ”

“ He picked up an Easter lily which Geneviève had brought that morning from Notre Dame, and dropped it into the basin. Instantly the liquid lost its crystalline clearness. For a second the lily was enveloped in a milk-white foam, which disappeared, leaving the fluid opalescent. Changing tints of orange and crimson played over the surface, and then what seemed to be a ray of pure sunlight struck through from the bottom where the lily was resting. At the same instant he plunged his hand into the basin and drew out the flower. "There is no danger," he explained, "if you choose the right moment. ”

“ When, bearing blessings, they descend to earth."
Shall we describe the angel-child Lilly, whose symmetrical features and quiet ways were the exact counterpart of her father's, or shall we leave her to the creation of the fancy, after giving the brief outlines? Fair as a lily her straight soft brown hair was of the richest hue in which nature asserted her independence, as that of both her parents curled. ”

“ They have seen too much hard, repressive toil to admit of the development of lily beauty either in form or color. In general they are thickset, with large feet and hands, and with sun-browned faces, often curiously freckled like the petals of Fritillaria atropurpurea. ”

“ As a fair white lily grows up out of the bed of meadow muck, and without note or comment rejects all in the soil that is alien from her being, and goes on fashioning her own silver cup side by side with weeds that are drawing coarser nutriment from the soil, so we often see a refined and gentle nature, by some singular internal force, unfolding itself by its own laws, and confirming itself in its own beliefs, as wholly different from all that surround it as is the lily from the ragweed. ”

“ Have you ever seen a clump of L. Brownii in flower? Last July there was a bed of this lily at Kew in full blossom, and as the weather had been remarkably suitable to the plant, and its blossoms had not been injured by rain, the sight of that bed was one of the loveliest sights we can remember.
This lily has lately become more popular than formerly, but it is very far from enjoying that universal admiration which it amply deserves. One reason for its comparative scarcity is its tendency to degenerate, a tendency which we strongly suspect is due to improper culture. ”

“ The stem grows to about three or four feet high, and bears at its summit from two to six flowers somewhat like those of L. Giganteum, but smaller, poorer, and marked on the inside with brown rather than claret-colour. The flowers open wider than do those of L. Giganteum, and are incomparably less beautiful. This lily is a native of Japan and China.
It is decidedly a scarce lily, and is exceedingly difficult to flower. We have not succeeded in flowering it ourselves, but a solitary bulb that we possess sent up last summer a fair crop of its curious leaves. ”

“ As far as we can find out that gentleman is quite unknown to science. Perhaps some wag might suggest that the name originated through ignorance. The man who discovered the lily—or rather who thought he had discovered it, for the plant has been cultivated in Japan for centuries—perceiving that the colour brown was very characteristic of the flower, wanted to name the lily with a Latinised version of “The Brown Lily,” but his classical education, having been somewhat neglected, he knew not the Latin for brown, so he named the plant Lilium Brownii or Browni to cloak his ignorance. ”

“ This plant resembles the last, but its flowers are longer and larger though not so fine in colour. This plant bears the longest flowers of any lily, extra fine examples being upwards of a foot long. This lily will not grow well out of doors and should be grown in a conservatory. It is a very difficult plant to manage. Amongst other things, it has a creeping stem, and if grown in a pot it often sends up a shoot which meanders about beneath the soil, and eventually visits the light through a drainage hole, totally exhausted by its subterranean peregrinations. ”

“ What, then, should we imagine Lilium Elegans, the elegant lily to be like? And what is the reality? A low-growing clumsy stalk bearing two or three top-heavy enormous blossoms sticking bolt upright, chiefly of crude colours! As inelegant a plant as it is possible to conceive, having about as much right to the title of elegans as has the hippopotamus! Where did this lily get its name from? It has another title, Lilium Thunbergianum, or Thunberg’s lily. ”

“ Purdy says of it: "It is seldom seen farther than two miles from the ocean. On the edges of the bogs the lily is often a dwarf, blossoming at three or four inches. In the bogs it roots itself in the tufts, and becomes a lovely plant five feet high with ten or fifteen fine blossoms."
The leaves are dark, glossy green and the blossoms are more cylindrical than funnel-form, the three inner segments spreading more than the outer, which remain almost erect. ”

“ There is no flower that grows to a greater height than the lily, sometimes, indeed, as much as three cubits; the head of it being always drooping, as though the neck of the flower were unable to support its weight. The whiteness of the lily is quite remarkable, the petals being striated on the exterior ”

“ Surely the common prejudice against painting the lily can but be based on mere ground of economy. That which is already fair is complete, it may be urged—urged implausibly, for there are not so many lovely things in this world that we can afford not to know each one of them by heart. There is only one white lily, and who that has ever seen—as I have—a lily really well painted could grudge the artist so fair a ground for his skill? Scarcely do you believe through how many nice metamorphoses a lily may be passed by him. ”

“ There is a large lily with a bunch of sweet-smelling flowers, not unlike the Madonna lily, but the flower is more notched and less of a funnel. It has enormous bulbs, some of which I scraped out of pure sand at [166] a depth of 2 feet. Other bulbous plants are common, and huge downy reeds.
It is now 2 p.m. I am sitting in a juniper bush in the middle of the bar, scribbling, all the country in a scorching haze, the shells from the ships screeching over our heads, searching all the ridges and hollows in front of us. ”

“ The cultivation of this lily presents some difficulties, but surely it is worth while to give{333} a little trouble to grow such a superb plant? We very rarely see it in cultivation, but in our garden it shall always find a home.
A plant growing in such a robust manner as this lily is not suitable for a flower-bed. It should be grown by itself in a shady nook. A clump of two or three looks very lovely, and it is possible to arrange matters so as to have at least one flowering spike every year. ”

“ Here I was ready if necessary to go through fire and water--a certain amount of each, at any rate--to get a better knowledge of the frank-hearted girl whose enthusiasm had so touched me in the afternoon, and all that Fate asked was a cabman's fare and a few stern words delivered with an air! Fate is no bargainer worthy the name. ”

“ The lily, when it has come to its height, is a lovely flower (Matt. vi. 29) , so grace is the comeliness of the soul, Ezek. xvi. 14. It is the beauty of holiness that is produced by the dew of the morning, Ps. cx. 3. [2.] They shall grow downwards, and be more firm. The lily indeed grows fast, and grows fine, but it soon fades and is easily plucked up; and therefore it is here promised to Israel that with the flower of the lily he shall have the root of the cedar: He shall cast forth his roots as Lebanon, as the trees of Lebanon, which, having taken deep root, cannot be plucked up, Amos ix. ”

“ I feel sometimes like a lily in the midst of many poisonous weeds. If it was not the hand of Providence causing the wind to blow another way, it would choke the lily, and it would wither and die, so does the hand of Providence protect me as I move on the face of this unfriendly earth ”

“ As for considering the lily, it is not a matter of consideration. The lily toils and spins hard enough, in her own way. But without that strain and that anxiety with which we try to weave ourselves a life. The lily is life-rooted, life-central. ”

“ From three to ten flowers are produced on each stem. The flowers are nodding with the segments much recurved, and are about an inch across. In the type the colour is a dullish-red, but there are also orange and yellow varieties.
This lily looks well in big masses, for the blossoms are very graceful, though perhaps rather disappointing for a lily.
Lilium Pyrenaicum, or the yellow Turk’s cap, is by some authorities considered to be only a variety of the last; by others to be a distinct species. ”