Here and there in the shadowy woods is a vivid dash of color made by some wild red lily which has caught a stray sunbeam in its glowing cup. The purple spots on its sepals guide the greedy bee to the nectar at their base; we too can take the hint and reap a sweet reward if we will, after which we are more in sympathy with those eager, humming bees.
This erect, deep-hued flower is so different from its nodding sister of the meadows, that we wonder that the two should be so often confused. When seen away from its surroundings it has less charm perhaps than either the yellow or the Turk’s cap lily; but when it rears itself in the cool depths of its woodland home we feel the uniqueness of its beauty.
Turk’s Cap Lily.
Lilium superbum. Lily Family.
Stem.—Three to seven feet high. Leaves.—Lance-shaped, the lower whorled. Flowers.—Orange or scarlet, with purple spots within, three inches long, from three to forty growing in pyramidal clusters. Perianth.—Of six strongly recurved sepals. Stamens.—Six, with long anthers. Pistil.—One, with a three-lobed stigma.
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
They toil not, neither do they spin;
And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory
Was not arrayed like one of these.
How they come back to us, the beautiful hackneyed lines, and flash into our memories with new significance of meaning when we chance suddenly upon a meadow bordered with these the most gorgeous of our wild flowers.
We might doubt whether our native lilies at all resembled those alluded to in the scriptural passage, if we did not know that a nearly allied species grew abundantly in Palestine; for we have reason to believe that lily was a title freely applied by many Oriental poets to any beautiful flower.