piercing sun-baked soil

piercing sun-baked soil

fragile cotton candy flowers

on smooth nude stems

Every year in late summer I'm always astonished when the squadron of surprise lilies pop up through the hard clay soil on sturdy naked stems like green lances topped with multiple pink spear heads. The long leaves appear in the Spring and then, having absorbed the sun's energy, wither and die away. The plant vanishes into the vault of the earth, lying dormant through the drought of summer, only to be resurrected in August. Still, I'm amazed that they can bloom at all after the months without rain that we've been having. 

          The leaves below this clump of resurrection lilies are actually the remnants of day lilies that have finished blooming.

This troupe of magic lilies form into a circle of ballerinas in pink tutus en pointe, dancing to the music of a light breeze playing through the leaves of the shagbark hickory.

Within the delicate pink petals, long lavender filaments topped with golden anthers surround the even longer purple style crowned with its sticky stigma, awaiting a visitation from a winged pollinator. All parts of Lycoris squamigera are mildly toxic, so deer and other animals leave "naked ladies" unmolested. Only proper suitors may approach!

When the mating game has ended, the green fruits containing seeds swell at the narrow end of each pink trumpet and the blossoms of the mystery lilies begin to shrivel and fade.

As the blooms dry out and collapse, they hang from the seed pods like long brown tresses. Yet even in death there is beauty in their graceful convolutions.