Pretty pictures: Lilium cvv.

So it's Lilium season again. A couple of the Hemerocallis (day lilies) are beginning to bloom too, but mostly what I've been noticing are the Asiatics. Which would be hard to ignore even if I wanted to. (It's possible that some of these are not Asiatic lilies, but lilies of some other type. I don't claim to be a lily Ph.D.) I'm especially fond of the red and white NOID, first in line below.

Whoever owns the rights to the "Tiny" series of lilies has got to be making a damned fortune. By the way.

Lilium NOID.


Lilium NOID.


Lilium 'Tiny Athlete.'


Lilium NOID.


Lilium NOID.


Lilium 'Tiny Bee.'


Lilium 'Tiny Ghost.'


Lilium NOID.


Lilium NOID.


Lilium 'Tiny Sensation.'


Lilium 'Tiny Sensation.'


Lilium NOID.


Lilium NOID.


Lilium 'Pink Pixie.'

Pretty picture: Lilium x 'Tiny Ghost'

Another short post to give everybody time to catch up.

Advanced students may wish to check out this .pdf file, which location was mailed to me last night by David, a PATSP reader and contributor at Kitchen and Residential Design, and which is a copy of Backster's original publication in the Winter 1968 International Journal of Parapsychology. Overall, I feel like I understand the experiment better, and I'm not inclined to retract anything from the posts so far. For example, I was kind of startled to realize that the original paper is based on only seven runs of the Brine Shrimp Boilatron (my name for it). He did use three sets of electrodes on each plant, for the seven runs, resulting in 21 graphs. He does report better results than chance, but of course he also threw out eight of those graphs for one reason or another, which seems like a lot to be disregarding, and for stupid reasons.

Anyway. Read it yourself if you like. Or don't. Either way, I don't find myself wanting to take back anything I said in the earlier posts. On the one hand, his results are better than random chance (once he throws a large chunk of them out), but on the other, there's not a lot of data being considered, either. Considering the magnitude of what he claims is happening, I was kind of expecting better. Or at least more. I still wouldn't mind trying it for myself, though.

Meanwhile, I have an extra day to try to figure out Cleve Backster Part III. I have a complete post written, so it's not that the post is unfinished. It's just the kind of finished where I might decide at 9 PM tonight that two-thirds of it needs to be thrown out and re-written. Part III has been kind of problematic throughout the whole writing process; anything could still happen.

I will be glad when Cleve Backster and I are allowed to see other people.

Anyway. Onward, to the lily. Saw this in Cedar Rapids a couple weeks ago, at Frontier Garden Center. There were several other varieties there, but this was my favorite. The picture, sadly, doesn't really do it justice.


The timing seemed weird, though: it looked like they'd just gotten a bunch of these in. (Lowe's, too, a few days ago when the husband and I were there.) They were all really pristine and brand new. But isn't it too late for Asiatic lilies? Or is this when you're supposed to plant them?

Pretty picture: Lilium cvv.

Not a lot really needs to be said about these. Lilies tend to speak for themselves, and most of us have seen this first one, Lilium 'Stargazer,' already. (Readers who have read Amy Stewart's book, Flower Confidential, will also be aware that there's an interesting and somewhat bittersweet history behind this particular cultivar. See my full review of FC here.)


This second one is very similar to 'Stargazer,' but lacks the white edges and gradually deepening pink-red toward the center of the petals. Also much less freckled. I can't really decide which I like better: I suppose it'd depend on how far away you expected people to be when they looked at it. What's your vote?


Both of these pictures came from a trip to my ex-job, by the way. I mean, just so you know.

Idea:

More cultivar names, potentially, though these might be a tad more obscure than my previous suggestions. On the other hand, there are so many Lilium hybrids out there, and more happening all the time, that I figure the breeders and developers would appreciate some suggestions, however little mass appeal they might have. So, I give you:

The older crowd might appreciate Lilium 'Gish.'

Their younger, hornier grandsons would find Lilium 'Garcia' more to their liking.

I'm not sure if Lilium 'Tomlin' is cheating or not. Maybe it would be okay if referred to as the "Tomlin Lily," instead of with the botanical name Lilium. And of course if "Tomlin Lily" is okay, we could also have Lilium 'Allen.' (Special bonus relevance: Lily Allen wikiposedly studied horticulture before her music career happened, so she's one of very few people in the world who could both be the subject of this joke and appreciate it properly.)

Just throwing them out there; nobody has to use them. Though I would like to see Lilium 'Gish' sometime. Kinda surprised it hasn't happened already.

Pretty pictures: July roadside flowers, pink/orange

Took a back-roads route from Iowa City last Thursday, and found all these. Plus there's another post with more flowers coming up tomorrow Tuesday. As always, if you know the identity of the one NOID, let me know in comments.

All of these will be bigger, clearer, and more detailed if opened in a new window.

When I took this picture, I was pretty sure it was a Queen Anne's lace, Daucus carota. Then as I got to looking at it afterward, I was thinking that it seemed awfully full for Queen Anne's lace, and maybe it was some other, related plant. Now I'm kind of leaning toward the Daucus theory again, but I'm unsure. Open in a new window to see the odd insect sitting right in the middle of it all.

I've taken photos of fleabane (Erigeron sp.) before. It's not a big thrill, and this particular batch looks kinda ratty (it's been windy a lot lately) but I feel obliged to include it for the sake of completeness.

Hadn't ever really noticed these NOIDs before: they're pretty tiny, and the plants look like hell (which you can kind of see from the foliage I didn't crop out), but when you get up close enough, the flowers are very nearly attractive. Not quite, but very nearly.

I have yet to take a picture of milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) flowers that didn't also include a ton of bugs as well. I think the common name should be changed to "pink orgyflower" or something similar. Interesting greenish, non-metallic bee in the top right.

I think this is a Rosa arkansana, prairie rose, in which case it is the official state flower of Iowa. If I'm wrong, then it's most likely a multiflora rose, Rosa multiflora, in which case it is a noxious invasive weed. Thorny son of a bitch either way.

Red clover, Trifolium pratense. I can't imagine any readers not knowing this plant, but I've led a sheltered and exclusively North American life thus far, so maybe they're news to someone. These are everywhere here, all the time. I also really like them.

Michigan lily, Lilium michiganense. We have orange daylilies all over the place here -- in some spots they're lining both sides of the road for a couple hundred feet. I remembered my grandmother having Michigan lilies along a slope to one side of her house, but was beginning to think I must have confused them with daylilies, because I'd never seen any around here that weren't obviously cultivated: I was pretty sure that hers hadn't been deliberately planted.

Now that I've seen this bunch, though, which was just sitting in the middle of nowhere along a road, with no house or other structure nearby, I feel a little more confident in saying that no, what she had really were Michigan lilies (which she called tiger lilies). 'Cause apparently they are around if you look for them. Just not to the same degree as the orange Hemerocallis.

Asclepias tuberosa. OMG guys I love these. We had had them at work last year, but sold out before any flowered, so I never got to see.

I've been noticing little flashes of orange low in the grass along Highway 218 for a couple weeks now, but of course we're always going by too fast to get a good look, so I wasn't sure what they were. The batch I finally took a picture of happened to be conveniently located near a gravel/highway intersection near Lone Tree, where we had to stop anyway.