Some Mississippi Lilies

...turns out I saw an interesting variety of lilies during my summer on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The most interesting one was Yellow Colic Root (Aletris lutea) because, when I first spotted it, I thought it was an orchid. I thought it was an orchid because it looked some kind of Ladies' Tresses. A yellow Ladies' Tresses!

When I discovered it wasn't an orchid at all, but a lily, I was disappointed. But now, looking back, I see it as something a little more interesting than "just another lily." After all, it did look like an orchid.

The flowers consist of three petals and three sepals, which are fused together, forming a six-lobed tube. These small, 1/4 to 1/2" long flowers grow in a cluster along the upper half of the sturdy stem of the plant much like the similar orchid I thought it was.

The entire plant - stem, flowers, and cluster of basal leaves - grows to one to three feet tall. It can be found in savannas, pinelands and bogs. Another Yellow Colic Root (A. aurea) differs in that the flower's lobes turn inward, giving the flowers the appearance of being closed.

There are also white Colic Roots: (A. obovata) and (A. farinosa). The roots of the latter were once gathered and used medicinally to treat colic. In 1863, Francis Porcher wrote in Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, Medicinal, Economical, and Agricultural ... Prepared and Published by Order of the Surgeon-General, Richmond, Va., "...infused in vinegar, it is given in intermittent fever. The decoction of the root and leaves in liberal doses is much employed in popular practice in the lower portions of South Carolina."

The Aletris species is only found in eastern North America and eastern Asia. (Imagine that, a species which flourishes in the east rather than the west...)

Another lily I found in this habitat, and was also exciting, was the Pine Lily (Lilium catesbaei). It was exciting because it was a bright, bold, new look-at-me lily, and it was growing in among a field of Pitcher Plants, making for a really spectacular display of botany.

Its gaudy orange to red petals and sepals (they look alike), with their speckled yellow base bring to mind Carolina Lilies (L. michauxii) or Turk's Cap Lilies (L. superbum), but unlike those, the flowers of this species are upright. Also, there is only one to a stem, a terminal blossom, rather than a panicle of as many as 25 flowers. It was named for Mark Catesby, a British botanist who spent twenty years of his life writing and illustrating Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. He had collected specimens on two trips to North America, from 1712 to 1719, and again from 1722 to 1726.

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