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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.
Matthew 6:28b-29
The lily, according to one tradition, sprang from Eve's tears when she learned that she was pregnant. In Greek and Roman mythology, it originated with the mother's milk of either Hera or Juno and was called rosa junonis ("Juno's rose"). What may be the oldest of the lilies, candidum ("dazzling white"), is also known as the Madonna Lily. Associated with the Virgin Mary, it supposedly turned from yellow to its more snowy hue at her touch. Another white, lilium longiflorum, only became popular during the mid-1800's. Originating in Japan, it was originally propagated in Bermuda. So Victorians knew it as the Beautiful Bermuda Easter Lily. But, as Tovah Martin points out in Once Upon a Windowsill, "The 19th century indoor gardener would scarcely entertain the notion of purchasing a fully grown Easter Lily completely budded and ready to burst into bloom. Victorians began their plants from scratch-from the basic bulb." Today most of our Easter lilies are grown on the Pacific coast near the California-Oregon border. Brides still wear or carry lilies, though it is unclear whether this habit originated as a reference to the brides' purity or as a hope for their fertility! If you dream of lilies during their season (summer), you can expect marriage and prosperity yourself. But, dream of them at any other time, and you are promised only frustrated hopes and death! Some stories held that unfortunates wrongfully executed often had white lilies spring up on their graves to proclaim their innocence. The lily is one of those flowers that people either love or hate. Although most admit its beauty, some cannot stand its frequently heavy odor. In her book, The Fragrant Path, Louise Beebe Wilder complains there is something "languorous and decadent" about a lily's scent. "There is in all of them," she writes, "despite the sweetness something brooding and sultry that is enervating and vaguely unwholesome." She also expresses the opinion that "the most artificial of roses seems to me to have a sweet naturalness about it, the wildest of lilies to appear stiff and sophisticated."
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