Not all lily species difficult to grow

Lilies flourish either in full sun or partial shade. The flowers last longer in partial shade, which also highlights the pale color of the flowers.

Another person might have settled down on his haunches, chawing a piece of straw. But gardener that I am, I stood flicking bulbils out of the leaf axils of my neighbor's lily as he and I chatted. By conversation's end, my hand was filled with these shiny, black, "peas" which I took home planted in my garden a couple of inches apart in a row. That was a few years ago, and the next season, small rosettes of leaves sprouted from the ground. The season after that, each elongating stem was capped by a flower or two. By the third season, a half-dozen mauve-tinged, white trumpets, each five inches long, nodded from the tops of regal, six-foot stems.

Lilies have a reputation for being difficult to grow. Some kinds are, perhaps, but the basic requirements of most are easily met. My plants - probably Lilium sargentiae, as evidenced by the flowers' yellow throats, brown-red stamens, and wonderful fragrance - evidently were of the easy-to-grow group.

Of course, not all lilies grow 6-feet high, and have white flowers. American Turk's cap lily grows from 4 to 8 feet high, with orange-red flowers bobbing downwards. Candlestick lily holds its cup-shaped flowers upward, atop 3-foot stalks. Tiger-lily flowers are spotted and rolled backwards at their ends. There are eighty species of lilies, including numerous hybrids, with a range of flower types and colors. (Incidentally, daylilies are in a different genus than these true lilies.)

Not all lilies make those small bulbils that I flicked out of the leaf axils along the stems of my neighbor's lily. Lilies can also be propagated by bulblets, bulb scales or seeds. Bulblets are small bulbs that form along stems below ground. Bulb scales are fleshy scales, arranged like shingles on a roof, which can be peeled off the large, mother bulb of a plant, somewhat different from the concentric scales that encircle tulip and many other fall bulbs. Lilies also differ from tulips in that the lily bulbs, scales, and bulblets will die if they dry out. Dig bulbs, bulb scales, and bulblets after the plants finish flowering, as the leaves begin to whither, then replant them immediately! When you buy lily bulbs, plant them just as soon as you get them home....