Spider Lilies
These spider lilies (Hymenocallis occidentalis), blooming happily in a pond at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, always remind me of a formative point in my life that probably eventually led to my discovering an interest in gardening.
When I was fifteen and a freshman in high school, my biology teacher gave us a collection assignment. We could choose between collecting insects, marine organisms (I grew up on the gulf coast), or wildflowers. It wasn't hard to choose which I'd work on. My friend and I worked as a team to collect as many unique species of native flowers from around the state as we could find.
Fortuitously, our wildflower collection project coincided with Spring Break, and I took a trip to New Orleans with my grandmother during that time. My grandmother is game for any kind of cool project, so we went to New Orleans equipped with my heavy-duty flower press, lots of plastic bags, and a trowel for digging up specimens.
So off we went, on I-10, and we stopped periodically on side roads to look for interesting flowers we hadn't seen. The moment you get to Louisiana, much of the ground turns to swampy marshland. I remember seeing tall white flowers in the marshy medians; they didn't look like anything I'd seen before. Finally, we found a place we could pull over on the shoulder of I-10 (those who are familiar with this general stretch of road are free to cringe and shudder here), and I set off to investigate this mystery flower, across three or four lanes of traffic and into the median. But it was far too muddy for me to walk all the way to the flower without being mired in muck, so my grandmother tied plastic grocery bags onto my feet before I went.
When she tells this story, she says that she'll never forget the moment when I finally dug the spider lily, bulbous root system and all, up from the mud and held it triumphantly over my head before crossing I-10 again and returning to the car. I remember how proud I was, and how excited that I'd have such an unusual specimen in my collection.
I pressed the flower itself, but the bulb-like root was too thick to press and dry. Instead, I potted it and planted it in my other grandmother's backyard fish pond, where it lingered and eventually died, never to bloom again. Obviously, our poor imitation of a habitat didn't match up to the real thing.
At least I got an A+ on the project.
When I was fifteen and a freshman in high school, my biology teacher gave us a collection assignment. We could choose between collecting insects, marine organisms (I grew up on the gulf coast), or wildflowers. It wasn't hard to choose which I'd work on. My friend and I worked as a team to collect as many unique species of native flowers from around the state as we could find.
Fortuitously, our wildflower collection project coincided with Spring Break, and I took a trip to New Orleans with my grandmother during that time. My grandmother is game for any kind of cool project, so we went to New Orleans equipped with my heavy-duty flower press, lots of plastic bags, and a trowel for digging up specimens.
So off we went, on I-10, and we stopped periodically on side roads to look for interesting flowers we hadn't seen. The moment you get to Louisiana, much of the ground turns to swampy marshland. I remember seeing tall white flowers in the marshy medians; they didn't look like anything I'd seen before. Finally, we found a place we could pull over on the shoulder of I-10 (those who are familiar with this general stretch of road are free to cringe and shudder here), and I set off to investigate this mystery flower, across three or four lanes of traffic and into the median. But it was far too muddy for me to walk all the way to the flower without being mired in muck, so my grandmother tied plastic grocery bags onto my feet before I went.
When she tells this story, she says that she'll never forget the moment when I finally dug the spider lily, bulbous root system and all, up from the mud and held it triumphantly over my head before crossing I-10 again and returning to the car. I remember how proud I was, and how excited that I'd have such an unusual specimen in my collection.
I pressed the flower itself, but the bulb-like root was too thick to press and dry. Instead, I potted it and planted it in my other grandmother's backyard fish pond, where it lingered and eventually died, never to bloom again. Obviously, our poor imitation of a habitat didn't match up to the real thing.
At least I got an A+ on the project.
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Um, yes, I am well aware of that stretch of I-10. Please just tell me you'll never consider doing that again. Your grandmother sounds like a great lady.
That's a great story, Rachel - I can't get the plastic grocery bag image out of my mind! This sounds like something my daughter would have done at age 15. Thank heavens we didn't live near the I-10 marshlands.
One of these days I'll get those iris to you ;-]
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
@Vertie: I promise. I'll pick a less frequently traveled interstate next time I go rushing into the median!
@Annie: Thank you! The whole trip was quite an adventure. We used plastic bags to keep many of the flowers humidified and alive until I was able to press them, so the car was quite full. We looked like plant distributors on our way to a nursery.
It was great to see you at Spring Fling.
What a nice shot of the spider lilies. I love the spider lilies too, they are so exotic looking. They are just starting to fade for the year out by me.
It is really nice to see one of my favorite Lilies. My mom used to have them in her flower bed in plain old dirt(In Houston, TX) They did quite well only to die off in the winter and came back strong in the Spring. Beautifull flowers.