The days of lilies

For one brief day, they brighten the world around them, and then they're gone -- hence their name, "day lilies."

Though there are many buds on each scape of the day lily, each bloom will appear early one morning between late April and late June, and close forever the same evening.

It is peak time for daylilies in southeast Missouri, and the gardens of Marilyn Brehmer southwest of Dexter are in full bloom.

Brehmer took an interest in lilies several years ago, admiring the lilies of a cousin and a sister. She eventually became acquainted with some hybridizers from Cape Girardeau and often acquired new lilies from those resources. Between friends, relatives and her Cape hybridizers, Brehmer's garden now boast over 200 varieties of daylilies.

"The last I knew, there were over 6,000 varieties of lilies," she notes. "That number has probably grown considerably since then."

The reason for that increase is that daylilies are comparatively easy to hybridize. An anther, or pollen-bearing part at the upper end of the stamen of the lily, is chosen as the "male" and the pollen is dusted onto the pistil of the plant that has been selected to be the "female." Soon after the petals of the flower fall off, a swelling of the seed pod will be noticed that should turn brown and split after a few weeks. Inside the pod will be shiny black seeds to plant. While the process is simple, there is a two to three year wait for blooms to appear.

While Brehmer doesn't hybridize lilies herself, her acquaintances do, and through trading, gifts and a limited number of purchases, two spacious gardens now come alive late each spring and bloom into mid-summer.

The lilies bear interesting, romantic, and often comical names that include Pumpkin Kid, Remembrance of Love, White Linen, Strawberry Shortcake, Starfish, Hidden Mystery, Ice Carnival, Russian Rhapsody, Windsong and Scatterbrain.

"It's funny, but I think that their names often sound just like the lilies look," Brehmer says. "Some lilies are also named for the person who hybridized them, and some remain unnamed."

Brehmer's late husband, John, helped her to establish the lily gardens. In order to keep track of their variety, age and other pertinent information, the couple ordered metal markers with two prongs that were placed in the ground near each plant. Each marker bore not only the lily's name, but an initial that represented whose supplied them with the lily, the date it was acquired, the date the lily was hybridized, and either an E, an M, or an L to designate it as an early, mid or late bloomer. Also on the marker were numbers as to how tall the plant is and the diameter of its bloom. The markers proved to be valuable reminders of the history of each lily and its origin.

But then came the ice storm of 2009.

"It was just over a month after I lost John, and I was overwhelmed," Marilyn remembers. "I had so many people out here helping me clean up. There were limbs everywhere, and we just picked them up and threw them into the back of a truck, load after load."

She didn't notice until that spring that probably more than half of the markers had been pulled up and thrown out with the limbs. She is now on a mission to re-establish the marking. While some of the history of the lilies may escape her, their names never do.

"This is a Double Classic," she says, gathering the one-day bloom in hand. "It looks very much like a carnation."

The lilies range from pale shades of lavender and yellow to vibrant shocks of red, purple, orange and red -- and for Brehmer, each with a personality of its own.

A chosen few of the lilies in Brehmer's gardens begin to bloom as early as late April, and then more appear through May, but the mid-season blooms are the most impressive, blending with a select group of early and late bloomers -- one day at a time.