I can clearly remember my excitement when I found my first Wood Lilies growing along the Kennebunk Bridle Path a few years ago. (See my post from 7/10/2010.) Such a wild beauty! And such an unlikely flower for me to have missed for 60 years of my life! I have been back each year since, looking for them where I first found them, but they are not there. I am tempted to blame the Town and their bushhoged attempts to widen the Bridle path, but the lilies have not returned even where the bushhog never trod. It is possible someone dug them out to replant in a shady corner of a yard. The Wood Lily is evidently well distributed in Maine, but it is threatened or endangered in parts of its range…and it not so well distributed in Southern Maine that I have been able to find another since 2010 in all my roaming about the woodlands and fields in search of birds and bugs, wildflowers and wild views.

Until last Sunday that is. I discovered a good sized patch of them in a place I go on a fairly regular basis (I will not say just where this time, just in case 🙂 They were growing within sight of a road that gets a fair amount of recreational travel…and looking more like a Prairie Lily (an alternative common name in many parts of the US) than a Wood. The Wood Lily is not very tall, but it has a bloom the size of a Day Lily…at least 4 inches across and sometimes larger. The open center makes it look very different than a Day though. Just about knocked me off my scooter when I saw them!

There were maybe 15 Lilies in various stages of full bloom, and a fair number more that were past. A good sized patch! The light was not ideal for great depth of field, but I was able to photograph a number of plants, and catch the range of oranges. I don’t know if the color variation is something to do with the plants themselves, the soil under them, or just the age of the bloom.

A stunning flower altogether! Now I will just have to wait until next year to see if they come back again!

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Macro mode. 24 and 34mm equivalent fields of view (except for the group shot which was at 460mm). ISO 100. f3.4-f3.6, 1400-1/500th.

Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.