It was dougannspalding before, but that was in 2015. I'm sorry for any offense. Your comment wasn't directed to me, but it was a possible solution to my questions about lilies changing color. In my case, it didn't pan out. I'll keep looking.

No offence at all. I just didn't understand your reply because I wasn't suggesting for a minute that is what happened to your lilies.

Sometimes, I love being wrong. The rest of my bargain lilies are blooming PINK! I guess the white ones (which looked more like Easter lilies) just bloom earlier. And taller, you can see the spent inflorescences.

Top picture is my lilies last summer (2015). I moved to a new house, transplanted my lilies to the new house and the bottom picture is the exact same lilies this year (2016). Seems like it has something to do with being transplanted?

I like to think that Lily's have meanings and mine turned from orange (anger) to white (peace) on a very important day.

The first picture is this year. The second picture is last year. Same pot, 2 different years. They do change color!!!

My mother has been planting one Easter lily brought home after Easter service ever year for the past 8 years. The next year they bloom a beautiful tropical pink.

I find it interesting how no meaningful answer has popped up but it is good to know that it happens especially facing the strong opinions (clearly not fact) of those that say it can't happen.

She was wondering about pollination or soil nutrients and I'm wondering if being outside with the elements might play a factor

So, yes, asiatic lilies DO change color. We had two beds, one with ALL yellow for over half a decade, one with all red.... some of the reds came in white, and some of the yellows, also, came in white this year. Never before has this happened. Photographic evidence of each bed from previous years, even from when the house was LISTED for the previous owner's purchase... Its possible these have been red and yellow since 2007, 2008? Now, 2017 - there are white ones where there were reds.

Hi gardeners. I live in a cooler climate in Canada and planted some Calla Lilies. The leaves have come up and the red colour of the lily began to appear, but the flower has changed from it's original deep red to yellow. The plant looks healthy otherwise. The same happened to my day lilies too. They were once red and are now yellow/orange. Should I be amending the soil? Thank you.

I planted deep red Asiatic lily bulbs in 2015, and all bloomed white! In 2016 all bloomed deep red, and this season it appears every other bulb is about to bloom red or white! I'm excited and don't mind the occurrence as I find every flower to be a lovely blessing! I agree with the temperature having an effect on their color.

THIS IS SO CRAZY! These were all "Lollipop" last year, this year i have all pink and all orange! I did move the ones with the color change, in the early early spring. we also had a late cold snap/hard freeze in spring.

Last year I planted star gazers, they only got to bout 2 feet tall before they bloomed. All I did in the fall was trim the stalks. This year they are 4 and a half feet tall and pure white.

Last year I bought star gazer lilies from some store, so pretty deep pink and fragrant. TOO fragrant as it turned out...so I took them to my deck and planted them in a pot. This year they've grown and as they are beginning to open seem to be mostly white! So lilies fo change color, I will look into fertilizer/soil/sun, could be they got to much sun, have moved them back a bit, southern exposure...very strange indeed!

Sory Houzz but your wedsite is so mucky and confusing. Please cut to the chase.

I can understand a little change in color but no from white to red???

Last year I transplanted lilies from one single sunny bed to all over the yard. They had been in the previous bed for at least nineteen years, always a mixture of colors. This year? All the same, everywhere around the yard. Orange. I hate orange lilies.

Ugh.

Lily bulbs that are hybrids can ABSOLUTELY change colours and flower shapes. It's called "reverting", and it's when the bulbs that has 2 parent's genes, ages to suddenly have the traits of whichever one of the parents. Mostly the gorgeous & unusual hybrids will go back to a plain yellow or pink with freckles, or orange. It's because a lot of hybrids are crossed with a very strong & hardy orange or pink Asiatic.

I have an ENORMOUS clump of a lily called Kaveri -- bright yellow with red in the middle of each petal, and now this year are ALL orange. There is no way the entire clump died out in one year, and the Kaveri lilies are sterile anyway, they can't produce seeds.

I have a huge clump of LA hybrid lilies that were different shaded of white & eep pink that ALL reverted to plain freckled pink a few years ago.

I have another clump of reddish orange that out of nowhere one year, got 2 true Tiger Lilies growing out of it (so a baby bulb decided to take after mom or dad plant). I've never had a Tiger lily before that, so obviously they were in the parentage of the reddish orange ones I had

Reverting happens all the time with bulbs, especially bulbed lilies. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There is no way that my huge clump of lilies came from seed, because IF they came from seed, they would take many years to get the bulbs big enough to have 5' tall plants with 20 blooms per stem.

I don't know what it is that causes them to revert though -- is it a colder winter causing the bulbs underground to change? Is it hot and very dry weather? Is it too much sunshine? Is it because the soil I planted them in is spent, out of nutrients??

I just don't know what it is that flips the switch, but there is definitely a drastic change.

Breeders not only select different parent flowers for colour, bloom size & shape, fragrance, and so on. They also use very hardy lily types in order to breed lilies that are hardy in cold regions. I think that a lot of the lilies we have came from crossing a hardy orange with a fragrant pink, or a hardy white with a fragrant red, etc. But the hardy lilies are probably the more dominant DNA. Just like people change their appearance as they get older (ir going bald or going grey very young, both things are dominant genes).

Erin. Thanks for your contribution. You have quoted your own experiences. I am interested further. May I ask. Are you simply a lily lover, a botanist or plant scientist? No disrespects but I am certainly interested in your experience. You see. I am a plant scientist and plant pathologist. In short. My interest lies in the DNA structure. In plant and human DNA studies. It is to date, a proven factor that DNA can't change by itself. Outside interventions have to take place. As a reallity, all life forms have a DNA. Yes there exists the ability for adaptation, but scientific examination does nit identify any change in the DNA structure.

Such variations in plants for instance, is usually traceable to soil and chemical changes along with clomate and other natural occurances. Please. I would like to know more about your stance on this matter. Regards.

No offense, Michael Allen, but your refusal of what we have all seen is frustrating.

What Erin proposes makes scientific sense. What if it is all a matter of the aging of the DNA, like the shortening of the telomeres in human cells?

You aren't the only one with letters after your name. Some of us just don't need to use all of them all of the time.

Regards,

Hydrangeahead, BSA, BSN, RN

This question brought me here to this sight and what I'm seeing has me greatly interested. My experience is similar to most of the comments I've read, except not only lilies, I've had a similar experience with Iris plants. I'll describe the Iris later on, but since we are discussing lilies, I'll stick to the lily subject. I reside in Central Pa just north of Harrisburg in a small community on the Susquehanna River, named Dauphin. I have flower a bed across the front of my home (east side) that wraps around across the width of the north end of the house. The front is just filled with beautiful red lilies across the 40 foot length of the front and much of the side. There can be as many as 6 blooms blooms measuring about 6 to 8" across and the stalks average 3 to 4 feet tall. Plus there are some other odds and ends of common lilies mixed in here and there among the red ones.

I started the red ones many years ago (?) from a single pot containing several blooms, simply beautiful and discovered over the years they are not only beautiful, but very prolific. Over the years, if split the bulbs over and over again and spread them out have flower beds around the east and north sides of my house. But, all the years before they were always the same big beautiful red blooms, never a change. Then, for the first time ever, this year I noticed a change with a few of the stalks. They all still had red blooms, but I noticed that a few of the younger stalks that had just one or two blooms had at least one nice peach colored bloom. There was also at least one stalk had a bloom with a mixture of red and peach color petals, plus another stalk with blooms that looked like someone spilled bleach on one where the color change started from almost white and spread out evenly over petals gradually turning through the peach coloring towards the red.

So as I so often do, I'm on the web looking for answers, sharing my experience with you folks. I did manage to get some pictures which I can post if anyone wants to see my lilies. Oh yeah, several years ago, I moved a bunch of multi-colored iris plants from an established bed I wanted to convert to grass to another part of my yard. I finished the job and as the summer passed through fall, winter than finally spring, the iris were thriving in their new location. The following spring, looking forward to seeing my replanted, Iris adding new color to my back yard, you can imagine my dismay and disappointment as I watched my beautiful multi-colored all beginning to bloom, but not the beautiful colors I was expecting. The new colors ranged from pale yellow to bright white........What happened, and where are all the beautiful colors I was expecting? Not a single colored iris among the hundred or so I moved. At first I wanted to blame that dirty, rotten scoundrel that's been hanging out in my neighbor's yard. Remember the gnomes everyone used to keep in their back yards? I never did trust those little twerps I wanted to take his pointy little head off. Anyhow, I never did get the chance and I eventually stopped blaming the gnome and figured out he wasn't the one. These days there aren't any gnomes in peoples yards anymore I can tell you though, not only lilies, but also iris will change on you and in my case, every year since they never changed back. They stayed white and pale yellow, every single one of them. I HATE WHITE IRIS!!!!!!

My mom gave me some of her yellow lilies to start my flower garden when we bought our house. Hers have been in the same place shaded under a tree for years and never varied In how they look. Since I planted them at my home, they have changed in color and become more layered every year.

I have had a pot of orange lilies for a few years.. then this year with no intervention one is red? Why?

That's pretty! They just do I guess, and I can't find any reason why. but the ones I moved in my yard that were lollipop lilies like the first photo, are now pink and Orange, been the same for years now since they got moved.

I had a very similar situation happen to me! I’m glad that I found this forum, so now I don’t sound so crazy!

I planted red asiatic lilies in both my front yard and back yard, the very first spring after planting these bulbs, they all bloomed the red color they’re supposed to be. Fast forward to the next year, well to my surprise half of the red lilies in my front yard bloomed a pinkish/white color. Skip to this year, now all of my “red” lilies in my front yard now bloom a pinkish/white color! All while this is going on, the red lilies in my backyard haven’t changed colors at all!

Here’s a couple photos:

This is the color it’s supposed to be. I don’t have a picture of the actual area when it was fully red blooms. This pic is my backyard red lilies .

This below is my actual front yard showing the color my front yard lilies changed to! If you look close enough at the bottom, there is still one lone red flower!

Cross-pollination

@mikeallen_a: You should probably read up on epigenetics. DNA does not change, perhaps. But which genes are switched on and off changes all the time, depending on outside influences. All cells have the same DNA. But a brain cell is not the same as a fat cell or a skin cell, for example. Same deal with plants, and within the same cell over time. Environmental stimuli definitely will be the influencing factor to the color change, I imagine, including parasitic attacks (insect, fungi, viruses, etc). Nutrient supply, water, sun, temperature etc etc.

This might be too scientific, but here is a link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030442381300383X

I just googled why are my lilies changing color and I found this thread. We have daylilies that have bloomed yellow for several years. We have never seen any color variation. I moved three clumps of them to another area of our yard. In the new area of the yard they are all blooming reddish. It’s a very different color than the original flowers. Given all the clumps I moved turned red in the new location I am assuming it has something to do with the soil.

That is what happened to mine different colours but now all orange

Can they be changed

my original tigers are orange and still are. we have thinned and replanted the bulbs several times over the years, always getting a new color the next year. solid orange, orange with the dark spots, yellows w/ spots and reds also with spots. We used to wonder why, but now its not so important. we just enjoy the colors as God sends them. this year we even had separate red and yellow blooms in the same cluster.

Can I change the color of my orange lilies? I hate orange in my garden.

Food coloring on the bulbs?

Yes, color changes are very likely due to reversion to the dominant parent's genetics. IT'S CRAZY COOL!

Several years ago, 5 to 6, I was given three or four Blush colored AL plants. Up until this year they have proliferated in their space always coming back same color, bigger and more full. It has created a 12 to 15 plant cluster in and among my Lily of the Valley and some variations of Hosta. Directly across from the blush colored AL plants some brand new AL have plants have come up. They are yellow with red in the center. I attributed it to cross pollination but after searching and finding a thread on said subject on Houzz, I am not sure specifically but I don't believe any and all DNA and environmental contributions can be dismissed. I agree maybe we should just enjoy and celebrate the glorious varieties that are put before us. Here is a pic of what they are becoming.

Those yellow ones are very pretty, what a fun surprise

New here, located in Zone 3a up in Leduc, Alberta, Canada. Its been very interesting reading all the other posts.

So my husband and I have a large bed of red asiatic lilies with small clumps of orange ones here and there. They were gifted to us in a container about 7-8 years ago from a neighbour. His colours were red and orange also. We kept them in the container for a couple of years and then planted them directly into our garden about 4 years ago. This was an area of our yard which had never had flowers before, but they've been thriving and multiplying in red and orange exclusively ever since.

This evening I went to check on my sweet peas and noticed a glaring anomaly! Check out my picture below, you can see our red and orange lilies in the background. Just one lily plant is yellow with a dark burgundy speckled center. I've never seen anything but red and orange in our patch and I don't know of any neighbours who grow lilies.

I came to find out if it's possible to have a hybrid created by bees or other pollinators with no human intervention. My husband and I water and pick off lily beetles and slugs, but otherwise our flowers do their own thing. We haven't fertilized or amended the soil in 4 years. From what I've read here, special hybrid colours tend to revert to a parent colour, not the other way around. Whatever happened, I'm hoping this plant continues to reproduce this colour. I love it!

I also had some beautiful white lilies last year this year they have changed from prestine white to beautiful orange and Fuchsia colors, don’t know if the heat has had any effect as it has been warmer then usual for our area.

After 15 years of outdoor yellow calla lilies out of 50 48 returned as white and 2 yellow. I have not done anything different. Our Virginia tempuatures were excessively high and we had a great deal of heavy downpours. Wonder if they can change back next year.

After 15 years of outdoor yellow calla lilies out of 50 48 returned as white and 2 yellow. I have not done anything different. Our Virginia tempuatures were excessively high and we had a great deal of heavy downpours. Wonder if they can change back next year.

While they are referred to as 'lilies", Calla Lilies are NOT lilies. It's unfortunate that common vernacular refers to Zandeschia as a lily, they're anything but. For an understanding of better care of this South African native see this Gardeners World article.

Pieter

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My lillies change from white to orange each year. this year they are white. i originally bought white.

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Planted small yellow and purple lillies 3 years ago, this year all yellow. Also moved a beautiful dark red peony, now it's a baby pink.Oh well mother nature is in charge. Love them all.

For the last four years, my lilies were white. This year, they are red! I live in the dry part of Colorado along the front range, and we have had tremendous rain this year, preceded by tremendous snow. I’m going to attribute my red lilies to moisture. Love this thread… Thanks for validating my surprise color change!

Yes

?

I planted several red white pink yellow lillies

. Last year all turned orange and his year they are twice as tall and back to original colours . Some are even multi coloured . Assumming this is anormal phenomenon so just going to be surprised every year .