The Tiger Lily.
Lilium superbum, Willd. Sp. Pl. vol. ii. p. 88. Pursh, Fl. Amer. Sept. vol. i. p. 280.—Hexandria Monogynia, Linn.—Liliaceæ, Juss.
This beautiful plant, which grows in swamps and moist copses, in the Northern and Eastern States, as far as Virginia, as well as in the western prairies, attains a height for four or five feet, and makes a splendid appearance with its numerous large drooping flowers, which sometimes amount to twenty or even thirty on a single stem. The leaves are linear-lanceolate, three-nerved, smooth, the lower verticillate, the upper scattered. The flowers are orange-yellow, spotted with black on their upper surface, the petals revolute. I was forced to reduce the stem, in order to introduce it into my drawing, the back ground of which is an attempt to represent our original western meadows.