Garden Mysteries: Tiger Lilies
While walking around my garden the other day I noticed something strange.
Yellow lilies stick together
My asiatic lilies, which I planted last year in a random pattern of red, orange, and yellow, this year are all clumped together by color. First yellow, then all orange, then all red.
Red Lilies do not mix with others
A few years ago the woman who runs the coffee shop in my work building told me (out of the blue, we had not been talking about lilies – but perhaps that is a mystery for another day) that lilies will cross-pollinate and all turn orange if you mix them. But that doesn’t seem to be happening here, as there are equal amounts of each color.
Orange Lilies coordinate by color and also delay blooming together
Googling “cross-pollinate lilies orange” doesn’t turn up anything either although it seems that there are some folks experiencing this phenomenon over at gardenweb.
I know plants can do amazing things but… uprooting and re-organizing by color seems beyond the abilities of even the most clever plants.
