The Sun is Killing Me: That mystery bulb...It's a Rain Lily!

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

That mystery bulb...It's a Rain Lily!

A couple years ago I was out collecting landscaping rocks from the construction site behind our housing development and in one of the Texas Holey Rocks were a couple of small bulbs. I thought maybe they were wild onion bulbs or something, so I tucked them in by the ferns I planted and forgot about them. Every year they would get a few flat, strappy leaves that stayed evergreen throughout the winter. I was walking past them this evening and happened to glance over and....Holy Cow - A HUGE white bloom! What?! Those bulbs were White Rain Lily bulbs! Sweet! I love it when things I rescue turn out to be something really keen. I think it is a Hill Country Rain lily (Cooperia pedunculata). Please correct me if I am wrong, I have a hard time telling the different rain lilies apart. These lilies are night bloomers and are supposed to be fragrant.

Here it is in all its white glory:

A little closer:

How ironic that I just bought a whole bunch of rain lilies.

3 comments:

Diana said...: What a special treat to have a surprise bloom. That's such a fun part of gardening, isn't it?; May 5, 2008 at 6:53 PM
Lee17 said...: Diana,

It is all about the little things!; May 11, 2008 at 6:13 PM
Annie in Austin said...: My experience was similar, Lee - dug the native white rainlilies out of the rocks at the last house and planted them in deck containers...otherwise the deer ate the tops before they could flower.
Now they bloom at our second Austin house.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose; May 12, 2008 at 11:46 AM

Zone What?

Seattle to Olympia is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8.

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)

Austin is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8-9

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)
Zone 9: -7 to -1 C (20 to 30 F)

The USDA map was updated this year - 2012. Some zones have shifted from the previous version.

See the current map here:

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html

Although both Austin and Seattle are in similiar zone hardiness, their climates could not be more different! Temps top out in the 80's in the summer in Seattle, where in Austin they can top 110 and stay in the 100's for months on end. The same plants that enjoy the Seattle maritime climate will fry in a second in the semi-desert that is Central Texas.

Learn about the heat zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/publications/heat_zone_map.htm

Check out the AHS Heat Zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/pdfs/05_heat_map.pdf

Past Garden Quotes of the Month

"The fair-weather gardener, who will do nothing except when the wind and weather and everything else are favorable, is never master of his craft."-- Henry Ellacombe
"The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession." -- Phyllis McGinley
"The way of cultivation is not easy. He who plants a garden plants happiness." --Chinese Proverb
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." --Greek proverb
'Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.' - Albert Einstein
"Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden." ~Orson Scott Card
"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden." ~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666
"A weed is but an unloved flower." ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebookse
"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination." ~Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897 (Thanks, Jessica)
"When one of my plants dies, I die a little inside, too." ~Linda Solegato
"In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death." ~Sam Llewelyn
"Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots." ~Author Unknown