Lilium - A Garden Tour

I love lilies! I have several in my garden. Come take a walk with me and visit them. Lilies are summer-flowering herbaceous perennials. They grow from bulbs. The bulbs are scaly. Some lilies are grown for their edible bulbs, but mine are just for show. And it is quite a show that they put on each summer!

The first on our tour is a white variety. I have three different white lilies in my garden. Here is one of them. This is the one that had its buds chewed off. (on a previous post) There were still several more stalks of them, so it didn't really matter. This one has a fantastic fragrance, which is especially noticeable in the evenings.


This is another one in a different area of my garden. This one has brown speckles. Can you see the damage done by the lily beetles? Those holes in the petals. I will have to be more observant next year and make sure I get all the beetles and their larva before they can do so much damage.


This third one is very beautiful. There were no beetles on these plants. I have no idea why not. Perhaps they just hadn't gotten around to these yet. This one also has a lovely scent.


I also have a few of the pink variety. In this photo it is easy to recognize the sexual parts of the lily plant. The stamen is light coloured 'knob' in the centre. It sits on top of the style. These are the female reproductive organs. The stamens are the six, brown rod-shaped anthers, each held up by a filament. These are the male parts which contain the pollen.


These salmon-coloured ones are really pretty. They are speckles with dark brown flecks and remind me of the old-fashioned tiger lilies. These plants are really tall. I love the way the petals curl to the back!

Here are some more salmon ones. For some reason these plants are shorter. All of my lilies go dormant in the winter and come back up in the spring. There are about 110 species of lilies within the genus Lilium.

And last, but not least, are some huge yellow trumpet-shaped lilies! Fantastic, aren't they? I love this one! I only have three stems of this variety. But that could change. Next year I plan to put a lot more lily bulbs into my garden. I can hardly wait!

Family: Liliaceae. Genus: Lilium.

Common Name: Lily

Purple Blooms and Blue Skies

I have several different kinds of irises in my garden. Iris are in the same family as crocuses, gladiolas and freesias. Their roots are usually a bulb or corm. The leaves are long and slender and pointed at the end. Irises were never a favourite flower of mine until recently. Now I think I want to study them a bit better and maybe buy a few new ones. I think I would love to have a yellow or peach coloured one. (or two)

The first photo is of a bulb type of iris. It is called, Iris Reticulata. I planted these irises many years ago. It was spring time and I bought a couple of flowering pots in a small store in the Beach Area of Toronto. I had never seen anything like them before. They were breathtaking as they sat on my kitchen table for a couple of weeks! After they finished blooming, I planted them in my garden and promptly forgot about them. Imagine my surprise and joy the following spring when these wonderful irises came up and bloomed long before anything else was even alive in the garden. Just to show you how early these things are, this photo was taken on April 15th of this year.




The next irises are dwarf irises. They were in the yard when we moved into this house. I have moved them about many times and by the look of things, they will probably have to be moved again as other plants have taken over their space. I have no idea what variety I have. They are just pretty irises to me. I also have a tall iris, but it is not in bloom yet.

Family: Iridaceae. Genus: Iris

Common name: Iris.

This one is sort of a medium tall iris. I don't remember the variety, but it is very beautiful too!

And now a sky photo. I have noticed several blogs with sky pictures on them. I love sky photos! They are never the same twice! Our weather has been strange lately. On the weekend we still had night frost. Today was a nice, sunny springlike day. But the next few days are going to be hot and humid. Temperatures of 29C are expected. From frost to a humidex in one week!

Blue and White Muscari

I love the little Muscari that are blooming in my garden. I have many of the blue variety and a few of the white. They are one of my favourite spring flowers.


They are grown from bulbs which are planted in the fall. Once planted, however, they tend to multiply rapidly in good soil and come back up each spring.

Family: Hyacinthaceae. Genus: Muscari.

Common name: Grape Hyacinth

Blue Spring Flowers

Welcome!

This is my first post on this blog.

In the future it will become my teaching and tutorial blog. I plan to provide patterns and instructions for some quilts that I will design myself. Come join me in this fibre journey.

I will also post about the occasional plant that interests me. This will be more a way of keeping track of what is growing in my garden or in my home, than anything else. I hope to keep a sort of gardening diary in addition to the quilting tutorials.

So here is the first plant.

My sister was wondering what those lovely blue flowers are that are blooming everywhere - in gardens, lawns, hillsides and parks in our city at this time of the year. I believe the plant she is referring to is called Scilla siberica

Scilla siberica is a perennial and belongs to the lily family. It is native to Siberia and likes cool conditions. That's why they do so well in our climate. It grows from a small bulb, which can be planted in the fall and left in the ground to continue to come up year after year. It can also be lifted in the spring and transplanted. They are very hardy and do wonderfully when planted in a lawn. The common name for this plant is Wood Squill or Spring Beauty, but it is more often called by its scientific name of Scilla siberica.

This photo is from the internet.

And below are some Scilla siberica that are growing in my front lawn rght at the moment. I took this photo this morning. A few years ago I discovered these beautiful blue flowers growing in a local ravine. They were beginning to grow into the path and looked like they were being stepped on. I dug some up and planted them on my front lawn. They looked a bit sad during that first spring, but they established themselves nicely and keep coming up faithfully every spring. They multiply rapidly and mine are beginning to cover a good part of the front lawn. By early summer they die down and have no detrimental effect on the lawn. I love the colour blue, especially when it comes to flowers. So these are some of my favourites. I also love the fact that they are one of the earliest flowers in spring.

Family: Lilium. Genus: Scilla. Species: S. sibericaCommon name: Squill, Wood Squill, Spring Beauty