Me-Tae says these are Tiger Lilies. I'm glad she knew, because I had no idea. Just looked out the back window one day to find a huge orange pouf on the end of a tall, tall stalk. There are a dozen or so in the front yard, too. They're wider than my hand. And they're much more vibrant than the picture lets on.
I wish they had a scent. Don't they look like they ought to smell delicious? Yeah. But there's nothing.Am I supposed to deadhead these things to keep them flowering? (And yeah, she suggested watering them. Said hers just glowed after she gave them a little water.)
You know, I am *never* going to be able to find all these bulbs to pull up this fall. The house, the meadows, the woods, even the rock hole that's filled with trash - none of it overwhelms me quite so much as this little patch of earth between the upper and lower drives.
Kiss those babies! And take time to smell the... well, not the lilies. But we give everything a quick sniff. You never know when you'll be pleasantly surprised, right?
~Dy
10 comments:
Wow, how pretty! Yes, you can deadhead them when the flowers shrink up and die. We had a bunch of these at our old house and I would go out and trim the dead stuff occasionally so that they wouldn't look too scraggly. That's interesting that they are tiger lilies - I thought those had the spots in the center. I would have thought they were a different variety of lily.
I don't think you dead-head lilies. I think they bloom just the one bloom, and then they leave the leaves behind. When the leaves dry up you pick them up (when you don't have to pull hard) and the bulbs lay dormant until the next season. Most bulbs are like that. Some people actually dig them up and divide them out and replant them, but I just let them take over the yard. Sigh.
Those are beautiful! I have a bunch of orange day lilies outside my bedroom window.
Those look like the lilies that I've been admiring by the roadsides around here. Are you sure you need to dig them up for the winter?
I don't think she meant pull them up, just pull the leaves off when they pull easily.
I thought tiger lilies had spots too, which always cracked me up -- shouldn't they be leopard lilies?
We have a few of them just wild in the yard as well -- at least there's something!
Are you wanting to dig them up to move them? Because they'll come back on their own. I have tons of daylilies that I inherited. I have basically ignored them for the last ten years and they keep coming back.
You shouldn't have to dig those up for winter - if you leave them alone they should just keep multiplying. Of course, some day you might want to thin out a bed of them, but you can do it while they're in bloom - we did, and gave some to my dad and transplanted the rest in our back yard (it was in Virginia). They are extremely hardy plants!
So these are definitely lilies, but possibly "day" lilies, not "tiger"? Me-Tae emailed me this morning w/ the same thoughts. Well, I'm not going to complain. Y'all had a better idea than I did. I just kept staring at them, thinking, "Aren't those supposed to be tropical?" It made me feel even more hot'n'sticky than I already do.
Gem, that made me laugh. Leopard lilies - I like that name!
I want to pull them up because right now that little patch of land is giving me absolute fits. It refuses to speak to me. It refuses to give me a vision. I even tried wine, and still - nuthin'. Short of peyote, I'm hoping that I can just jostle things around a bit and get a feel for what it wants to look like. Right now, *sigh* it's a mess. (Said as a true Southern colloquialism.)
Thanks, all, for joining in on the discussion. You guys make gardening almost fun! :-D
Dy
I think I may be too late to actually be helpful...but here you go anyway. :)
I think those are day lilies, not tiger lilies. My mom has day lilies in her garden and that is what they look like.
Yes, you should deadhead them, because if you don't they start looking really scraggly. I'm not sure exactly how long they'll bloom, but I seem to remember that Mom's lasted well through the summer.
If you DO pull them up, realize that they aren't bulbs. They're tubers - they look sort of like a cross between a potato and a sideways carrot. They can be divided and planted elsewhere and they'll spread themselves and go gangbusters. :)
Have fun! I love surprises in gardens!
Emily, not too late, at all! Thank you so much.
Dy
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