Adventures with the Martagons

Jon, will you hand me the binoculars?  What is that bright orange thing?  The first time I saw, really saw- this flower was nine years ago when Jon and I were traipsing in the Navaro River in Northern Ca. It was mid- July and we were on a camping trip and looking forward to swimming those lazy waters. But where had the river gone? We faced a pebbly dry river bed pock marked with an occasional amount of water that was swimmable for a few feet. Dang……

 After our initial weeping and throwing of pebbles we went on a lazy ramble doing a combination of scrambling over rocks, meandering, wading, and finally swimming. It turned out to be a great naturalist’s adventure, stopping to examine every insect, piece of animal poop, interesting rock and listen to bird calls. But what was the bright orange thing I spotted from afar? Not a bird, a butterfly, definitely a flower and unfamiliar to me in the wild. I took this photograph then, which marked the beginning of another flower adventure.

 See....

 I identified it as a lily, looking- wow!, incredibly exotic. It's always startling to discover that an amazing cut flower is an abundant native growing out yonder, in this case on the fringes of northern redwood forests. This native lily is the Humboldt Lily; Lilium humboldtii. This variety is native in the US and Canada, though other Martagons are native in other parts of the world. It can grow from 3-7ft- so they say, and is known either by the name Martagon or Turk’s Cap Lily.

 

 































I continued to spot it in our travels up north. One time I came upon so many, I brought my rule about not cutting natives and brought a stalk home.

Finally this very same lily started appearing in certain floral blogs, only in a much more subdued color. It’s not the bright orange of native varieties, but a beautiful hybrid called “Tiger Babies”. I simply had to grow them fussy as they might be. And here they are, blooming on a very short stalk this first year. I feel so lucky they came up and hope next year they will return as their tall selves.