What's Blooming Now - Toad Lily 10/23/10

Toad Lily (Tricyrtis formosana) is a really beautiful perennial flower, but it is the sort of flower that you have to bend down and notice. If you weren't looking for it you would miss it. Toad Lilies like shade. I have mine growing in the Shade Garden.

There are buds at every leaf joint on each stem. It is just beginning to bloom. But you can see what I mean - if you don't peer down closely you would miss the very exotic blooms of this plant. It even has a homely name. Poor little Toad Lily!

This plant's quiet, but very special beauty, reminds me of the poem by William Wordsworth:

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

Beside the springs of Dove

A maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye

Fair as a star when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!