Summer 2004

Prairie Lily
Sign of the Fine

Summer hikers will stop in their tracks when they come across the prairie lily, Lilium philadelphicum, typically in the very finest prairies. Illinois naturalist Virginia S. Eifert certainly took notice: "Blindingly, the morning sun strikes that vivid blossom," she wrote, "and the light rays bounce off the brilliance so that the flower almost seems to hold an aura of light around it." North American Indians noticed another kind of aura around the plant; they called it mnahea hea, meaning "very smelly flower," for its pungent scent.

The prairie lily's deep orange-red, purple-spotted flowers spread gracefully upward from a slender base at the top of the stem, unlike the downward-facing flower of the similar but more common Turk's cap lily. Though the flower appears to have six orange petals, every alternating "petal" is actually an orange sepal (a protective covering that is green on most other plants but mimics the petal color in all members of the genus Lilium). A long style emerges from the center of the flower, surrounded by six long stamens with purple-brown anthers poised at the tips. Usually between one and three feet tall, the prairie lily has one or two whorls of leaves at the top of the stem, with alternate leaves below. By August, the flower ripens into a three-chambered capsule that bears rows of seeds stacked like Pringles chips.

The prairie lily usually blooms from mid-June to mid-July in our area, growing in rich, moderately moist to moist prairies and sandy oak savannas. Some of its usual neighbors are dropseed grass, purple prairie clover, and lead plant.

In Plants of the Chicago Region, botanists Floyd Swink and Gerould Wilhelm pinpoint populations "in magnificent grandeur along the swale margins at Illinois Beach State Park after a prairie burn." Previous botanists have recorded the prairie lily in most of the Chicago-region counties, although Swink and Wilhelm have seen specimens from only three counties and consider it to be a very rare tallgrass prairie species.

Two varieties of Lilium philadelphicum cover, between them, most of North America. From Ohio west to British Columbia and New Mexico spreads the andinum variety, commonly called the prairie lily, western lily, or Rocky Mountain lily. It is the true prairie species found in Chicago Wilderness (and happens to be the floral emblem of Saskatchewan). The philadelphicum variety, known as the wood lily, ranges from Maine to Quebec and south to North Carolina and Kentucky. While the two varieties differ slightly in leaf width, capsule length, and habitat preference, they are difficult for most casual botanists to tell apart.

Because Lilium philadelphicum has such a wide geographical range, it has lots of other common names, including fire lily, flame lily, freckled lily, red lily, orange cup lily, glade lily, and wild tiger lily. Indians also called it "mouse lily" because mice (and even porcupines) often dug up and ate the bulb.

— Patricia K. Armstrong