BEACH SPIDERLILYSeveral plants with large blossoms with slender petals and/or long-exerted stamens are called "spider lily." Back in Mississippi a red-flowered plant blossoming in late July and early August, Lycoris radiata, of the Amaryllis Family, is the main "spider lily." Back home in Kentucky the main wild "spider lily," also a member of the Amaryllis Family, is Hymenocallis occidentalis. Down here one of the most spectacular as well as most commonly encountered plants on the sandy ridge separating the ocean from the mangroves is a "spider lily" with flowers very similar to the white Kentucky species. In fact, it's in the same genus. It's HYMENOCALLIS LITTORALIS, often known in English as the Beach Spiderlily. A cluster of blossoms standing guard outside my tent door recently is shown below:
In the picture notice the conspicuous "staminal cup" -- the flaring, white, cuplike "crown" from which the stamens arise, growing inside and a little above the long, slender, white, recurving, petal-like items. The staminal crown is a distinctive feature of several closely related genera in the Amaryllis Family, such as Narcissus and our Mississippi Lycoris. You can recognize the stamens by their brown, curved, pollen-producing anthers attached by the centers of their backs to long, stiff, greenish filaments arising from the staminal cup's rim. |
