Lilies for Easter

Consider the lilies how they grow:  they toil not, they spin not, and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Luke 12:27

Glorious lilies are the very symbol of Easter, and whether you choose the dramatic, pink speckled Stargazer, or white Oriental Lilies (above), or the traditional Easter Lily (below), you'll say, "Hallelujah", each time you gaze upon them!

What we call the Easter Lily, was once known as the Bermuda Lily.  In the 1880's a woman brought bulbs from Bermuda to her Philadelphia home.  For the next forty years, the Bermuda plant's popularity was in full bloom!  That is, until the Bermuda bulbs developed a disease.  Japan's Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa is the largest) then became a major source of Easter Lily bulbs for North America.

At about the same time, in 1919, a returning World War I soldier, Louis Houghton, brought home a suitcase full of hybrid lily bulbs, and gave them to family and friends on the Oregon coast.  The climate was perfect, and by the time Pearl Harbor put an end to trade with Japan, there were 12-hundred growers in Oregon and California, producing bulbs.

Today, the US Westcoast, along the Oregon-California border, is known as the Easter Lily Capital of the World.  Almost all of the Easter Lily bulbs - about 12 million of them - are shipped from there, to commercial greenhouses in Canada and the US.  Easter Lilies are not as popular as Christmas Poinsettias, however, they are the number four biggest seller in the potted plant market, just behind Chrysanthemums and Azaleas.

If you're wondering about the fate of the Bermuda Lily.  It lives!  Each year, Bermuda airlifts lilies to Windsor Castle, as a gift to the Queen.

The queen of the cut flower world, Stargazer Lilies, are the creation of eccentric hybridizer, Leslie Woodriff, an Oregonian who moved to California in the late Sixties.  He was obsessed with creating a spicy perfumed lily with stunningly beautiful, vibrantly coloured, large blooms.

Working from what has been described as a ramshackle home and greenhouse, he experimented with the fragrant, bell-shaped Oriental Lily, and the upright, colourful Asiatic Lily.  Oriental Lilies have a powerful fragrance, however, their large blooms face downwards.  Woodriff would gather pollen from one lily, and brush it onto the stamen of another.  He rarely kept research notes, so the exact parentage of his amazing Stargazer Lily is unknown.  One day, in the mid-Seventies, there it was:  the most beautiful, fragrant lily he had ever seen, and the vibrant pink, speckled blossoms were facing upwards, towards the stars!

Woodriff didn't make a penny from the world's favourite lily.  His business partner got the patent rights, and marketed the lily.  Money isn't everything.  There is more to life...
    

Lilies and Easter go back to Jesus himself.  In telling his disciples, (and this is translated into modern English) "...don't worry about your life, as to what you will eat, nor for body, as to what it will put on.  For life is more than food and body more than clothing.  Look at the lilies how they grow. They don't work or make their clothing, yet, Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are..."

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.