There are two Easter Lilies blooming in my yard. I'd post pix, but I don't have my camera handy and anyway most of you already know what Easter Lilies look like. These look like any other.
Eh? Why this time of year? Well, some of you might remember (if you have a really good memory for details) that earlier in the year I rescued a few of them after Easter. I planted them in my yard.
Now Easter Lilies are native to one of the southern islands of Japan--I think maybe Yakushima. Near the tops of the mountains winters are like New Englands but down near the beaches where the Easter Lilies grow it's hot and muggy like Florida. Easter Lilies (Lilium longiflorum I think) retain some vestigial cold-hardiness, but they're from a semi-tropical climate. So, as long as it stays warm, they can keep growing by making new bulbs along a rhizome. I think they're the only Lilies I've ever noticed that produce a rhizome (a creeping underground shoot).
Anyway, having been forced in a greenhouse to bloom by Easter, from their point of view, they've enjoyed a very long growing season and have responded by making new shoots and blooming. Quite nicely I might add. If they had not been started un-naturally early in the greenhouse, they would have bloomed around June or July or so, and would probably not have gotten around to reblooming, though it is possible if we had had a warm spring and autumn.
Also blooming are some Amaryllis belladonna. Some people know these as "naked ladies". You see them in abundance along roads in some parts of California, growing more-or-less naturalized. These look just like those, except someone has selected them for more delicate coloration; they are off-white graduating into deeper-colored margins on the petals. They're native to South Africa, and Seattle is a little cold for them, but they are surprisingly tough for their looks, and if the leaves freeze back they grow new ones and try again. They bloom before the leaves show up, hence the name. Colchicums which are smaller and not quite as feminine-looking do the same thing, which is why some folks especially old-timers from a more innocent age call them "naked boys", a term I'd be embarrassed to use. Some people call Colchicums "Autumn Crocus" but that is not a good name, because they are not Crocus. I don't think they are even in the same family. There actually are Crocus that bloom in the autumn, to be honest they are rather more refined-looking than Colchicums (which are course-looking and go over in a messy way) and I have a few, including the GORGEOUS and sadly rare Crocus pulchellus and Crocus cartwrightianus, which is a wild Saffron Crocus and much prettier than its deformed triploid cultivated form--and you can still use it for saffron anyway. It has the same colors as a domesticated saffron (pale purple with deeper striations, and vivid red-orange (saffron) organs sticking out), but smaller flowers that actually stand up and open up, unlike domesticated saffron. Plus, unlike domesticated saffron, it's less prone to dying out because it's not sterile like domesticated saffron is.
Yes, saffron comes from a crocus. Native to the Mediterranean, but for cheaper labor costs a while ago they moved nearly all production to the foothills of the Himalaya in India. Saffron is painstaking to collect; you have to pluck the stigmas from each blossom. Each flower yields one thread I think.
Many people confuse saffron with turmeric, or sometimes with another spice from the southern Mediterranean often called "saffron" but it's not. They are not the same thing, turmeric is cheap and saffron is VERY expensive (sometimes more so than gold but probably not at the moment!), turmeric has a warm earthy zingiberaceous smell while saffron has a delicate fragrance that is hard to describe. Saffron usually seems to end up flavoring starchy foods like rice (eg Risotto ala Milanese), potatoes, and buns.
We've been blessed with a very pretty Indian summer this year but it will not hold out too much longer so I need to finish up with harvest chores and protecting stuff for what I suspect will be a brutal winter. I will be out a lot. If I don't respond to email promptly, you know why.
