Dahlias, Surprise Lilies and Summer

13 years ago

I was sitting in bed this morning enjoying the view to the garden out my window as I do every single morning - it's flowers in the summer and birds in the winter. There is a dahlia outside and the two purple blooms on top are just glowing agaist especially the furry foliage of the lambs ear. Note the surprise lily just showing itself behind the blooms. That's another flower that adds to the show in late summer - I like the fresh foliage that fills the garden in early spring and then the blooms. A friend of mine gave me a huge clump of them a decade ago and I put them down the borders here and there and now I have a LOT of them!

This dahlia came from my quick purchases this spring at Walmart and it like the pink one does not look like the photo on the package - it's called Le Baron on the package but it has the casual twisted petal appearance more an informal decorative. Love this one - I will dig it in the fall. I only save the ones I really really like. :)

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Comments (4)

BecR
13 years ago
WOW that is a beautiful dahlia Cindy! Lovely border too. I just love those colors and textures together. Great job!!

I grow dusty miller here for soft gray foliage, but would love to try lambs ears. What variety do you grow/recommend?

Have not heard of a surprise lily, what is another name for that plz?

Thanks for sharing.

:) Becky
cindysunshine
Original Author
13 years ago
Surprise lilies aren't really lilies - but they are a bulb, Lycoris squamigera - see link below.

Lambs ears are a blessing and a curse - I started them proudly from seed 15 years ago and was so proud when they grew.

In the border they grow and self-sow rampantly - if you keep after them they are easily removed and I find they look their best when nearly removed entirely in the spring - I grab ahold and just yank and much of them comes out - the new small plants remaining grow lovely fresh foliage. They also look best if you grab the seed stalks and pull and cut them off throughout the growing season (which also helps manage the self-sowing).

I have a rather common one - don't have the variety written down but I suspect it is stachys byzantina.

Here is a link that might be useful: Surprise or Magic Lilies - Lycoris squamigera
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Thanks Carol. I thought I had read they would not bloom a year or so if I moved them, so I really hesitated to try that. They bloomed last year, but maybe the bud was already there~ But I'll fertilize in the spring as you suggest. I don't tend to fertilize my plants much, & this one was no different. I appreciate the botanical names of these too, it can get so confusing. I had asked last year about the difference in lycoris squamigera & amaryllis belladona, wasn't sure whether it was 2 different plants or the same. So I guess mine are Lycoris since I'm in the east :) I received them in trades & believe I received each under a different name. Didn't matter to me, I really enjoy them-when they bloom! clbravo-I have a few of those type too, so far, so good. They seem to have multiplied a bit since I planted them, also 2 years ago I think.
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Lilies can be kept in the ground year-round practically anywhere. Are yours Asiatics or Orientals, or something else? In your climate, Asiatics may be short-lived. They prefer some cold. Orientals might have some of the same effect, but they don't need as much cold as Asiatics. Lilies "set" their flower buds for the coming year over the winter. If they don't get enough cold, the buds aren't set, or fewer are set. When lilies have multiplied/split, you will usually see a second stalk. If they have made little babies on the stem, you'll see a rather small leaf or two near (but not quite on) the main stem. If you don't see either of those things, you can't divide them except by scaling them. That's not easy. I wouldn't try it unless I were willing to risk losing them altogether. If you scale them now, not only will the plants from those scales not bloom this year, they may not bloom for several years, when they finally get big enough. You can get more continuous bloom from lilies by doing staggered plantings, if the bulbs have been properly stored and haven't gotten completely dried out in storage. I wouldn't buy lilies from anybody but Ednie's at this point, since they store them properly cooled (refrigerated with exact temperature and humididy control.) In fact, you can get lilies from them any time of year, as they supply commercial year-round greenhouse growers. No doubt there are other such suppliers, I just don't know them. I wouldn't buy lilies from a hobby catalog now, either, except the very most reputable ones. I've gotten burned in the past, getting completely dried-out, papery lily bulbs when ordering late. They grew, just barely, and took three years to reach blooming size. Oddly enough, I WOULD buy late-bargain lilies now from a store, if they are packaged in a way that allowed me to see and evaluate the bulb, and feel how heavy (not dried out) the bulb is, and they passed my inspection. Lilies can be planted in fall or spring. That's why vendors offer them that way. In cold climates like mine, fall planting is riskier, as they may not have enough time to develop their roots, but it can be done. Actually, lilies can be transplanted at any point in their life cycle if you are careful with the roots. BUT - lilies never go completely dormant and don't like to be out of the ground. They cannot stay full of water that way and slowly dry out. They don't have a papery outer coating like tulips, daffs, and glads corms do, to keep them from drying out. That's why late lilies may not be a good idea. If they haven't been properly stored, they could be very dried out and in very bad shape. As for the dahlias - I'm just jealous. I haven't transferred mine from pots into the ground because it's so dang cold and wet, I'm afraid the stress will cause them to rot. Jeanne
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Thanks for the additional pictures. After reading your post last night I googled the name and most of what I found did look different from yours. Almost everything has a darker zone in the center of the petal : which I think would look really nice, if this does have it. One wholesale site listed it as "brick red" (!). Neither the picture on my bag, or yours, leads me to think it might be brick red. The bag my C of C came in is not the same as yours. Mine says Product of USA and Van Vyderzen as the grower. The Triumphator and Pink Heaven are in the white bag, just like you have, marked Product of Holland. (I thought I was the only one that saved the bags! I cut off the picture with any info and save it.) I might just have to plant half in each site, assuming I will have to move the other half later. Deep raspberry would still be ok, as I have no asiatics that color either. Loads of later blooming things in orientals, nothing early. It would just change where I put them. I dont know that my garden is that organized: Im always trying to shoe horn things in. Just that my main, largest garden has a lot of soft colors. It just evolved that way. When I later bought other things that were unlabelled or mislabeled and found they were orange or bright yellow, I had to move them when they just didnt go. Thats how my "hot" bed got started. I did not want to throw away things that were great plants. I have tried several times to get a soft creamy yellow asiatic. What I got was one like yellow Gatorade: almost fluorescent screaming yellow. Great bloomer, but, ouch, it hurt my eyes. So the hot bed started with that, plus moving in an orange pixie, then Monte Negro which is red but with an orange cast, more like dark rust color. Bought Lily Red Dutch, which is yellow and red. The rabbits ate them to the ground before they were 8 inches tall so I have not seen them bloom (hope they lived). I added red lobelia cardinalis and some other perennials. My pictures are on a different computer; if I can find them Ill post some. The second picture is yours? I really like the color on that one. Looks rich. It does not have a pink cast in that shot. Now I have to figure out what to do with the sprouted lilies. Im afraid Ill have to pot. I dont know where to put them after I pot them, though.
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Annie
13 years ago
Cindy,

Three days ago I was trimming back the shrubs by the patio and I was "surprised" to find a 3ft tall blooming Naked Lady, pretty and pink and in full bloom!

First of all it was a surprise because I didn't see it until I trimmed back the Snowball bush. How I missed clipping it is nothing short of a miracle.

Secondly I was surprised because they never bloom until late September. None of the others have come up yet.

The only thing I can think of is that the shade of the snowball bush made reduced the daylight so much that it triggered the plant that it was time to come up out of the ground and bloom.

How strange.

I intended to take some pictures of it and record the date on which I found it blooming, but I have been so focussed upon the arduous task of "trimming the verge" that I keep forgetting.

Your flowerbed there by your house is just lovely. I didn't set out my plate-sized deep pink Dahlias this year. They get too tall ad then flop. The flowers are just so danged big. Yours is so pretty. Makes me wish I had.

I don't have any Lycoris lilies here on this place. I had a few at my old home place years back. They were scattered in the lawn and every year when they came up, my youngest child would be in awe. He would dance around them and laugh. They always came up in the fall when the pecan leaves carpeted the lawn and the nuts had begun to drop. We would go out to gather the nuts and there they would be. "Magic Lilies" is the name he called them because they sprang up overnight...like Magic!
How funny that I learned many years later that it was actually one of their common names.
(Reflecting: I know - I'm always talking about the past. When you get older, you have nothing to look forward to, so you begin to look back! The days going forward go by so quickly, so it just seems natural to look back to the days when time seemed to pass by more slowly.)

~Annie
cindysunshine
Original Author
13 years ago
Annie - I agree with you - life IS memories. We are somehow the complex uniqure combination of the child of our past added to our memories with the spark of the dreams of the future. And always there is a future - just less of it and heavier input on the memories.

I read a book someplace (maybe it was a Nicholas Sparks one) and the expression was "If given a choice, make a memory." I can't tell you how often that thought pops in my head when it's one of those same old same old or forging into something new in place, people, experience, and especially if you have to research, learn something, or especially figure out the pleasure when it didn't appeal to you in the beginning.

Back to the magic/surprise/naked lady lilies, I am wondering if what you have that blooms in the fall is a different variety? Mine always bloom now late July early August. Perhaps the one blooming came in as a tiny start with the snowball bush - a gift from the garden faery. :)

What a nice series of thoughts to start the day and the weekend ahead. Let's make a memory. :)

Dahlias, Surprise Lilies and Summer

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Dahlias, Surprise Lilies and Summer

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