Plant of the Week!

This week the Tiger Lilies (Lilium lancifolium) are blooming beautifully in my garden. Tiger lilies are actually a bulb, similar to how all other true lilies grow. This lily in particular grows to about 4 ft in height and has formed a nice clump in my garden. The flowers of the tiger lily are orange with black spots with the characteristic curled back petals. They typically bloom from about August to September.

One interesting thing about the tiger lily is that it can produce aerial bulblets, known as bulbils, in the leaf axils along the stem. These bulbils appear at first as small nodule-like buds that become shiny and black as they mature, beginning near the bottom of the stem and continuing up. These bulbils are easily seen in the axils of the leaves on the tiger lilies. Fully developed bulbils will drop to the ground shortly after the plants bloom. Bulbils can be harvested once they've matured, but before they fall and planted much as you would a normal bulb. It usually takes 3 or more years to develop a mature, flowering plant from a bulbil.

Don't be confused by those orange lilies growing along roadsides everywhere either. Those are actually Ditch Lilies also known as the Tawny Daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) and not a tiger lily, like some people refer to them as.