These ladies are sure to shine. Find a spot for them in your North Texas garden

There’s probably no more delicate flower found in our gardens. I’ll give you two choices of names: Lycoris squamigera or “naked ladies.” Or you can go with the unimaginative “surprise lilies” that is shared by a bunch of other flowers, or the less common but hard to explain “resurrection lily.”

They get that mouthful of a botanical name because they’re sisters to our more common spider lilies, Lycoris radiata. Plant taxonomists look at all the flower parts and they talk over coffee. Then they decide that the two plants are similar enough to be put into the same genus. (Actually, the similarities are more clear-cut than that.)

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s website says genus Lycoris “… honors a Roman beauty, the mistress of Mark Antony.” The Southern Garden Historical Society says the species name refers to the iridescent scales on the petals.

The common names are fairly easily understood when you know that the plant sends up its wide, lush leaves in the spring. By early summer they turn yellow, then brown and die back to the ground. Then, as if magically a few months later, these stalks of delicate pink blooms pop forth out of nowhere almost overnight. “Naked” of leaves, as it were — just the flowers on 24-inch stalks. They last for a couple of weeks, and then they die back to the ground to start the cycle all over again.

As to its background, the Southern Garden History Society says this plant was introduced to America from China by Dr. George Hall of Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1862. Seedsman Charles Mason Hovey of Boston brought it into the nursery trade a few years thereafter. Slowly it made its way across the South where it was passed along by veteran gardeners, one to the next.

Our star today is a sterile triploid hybrid plant — an infertile “mule” of the gardening world. Its parentage is uncertain, but one thing is implied: it’s not going to give rise to viable seeds. Propagation will be asexual, normally by division of the bulbs as they begin to form new clumps.

As with other species of Lycoris, this one needs a couple of years to become mature enough to start flowering. The photo from my garden was a bare-rooted bulb dug two years ago from a neighbor’s rural Metroplex-area property as they scraped up the topsoil in the process of removing an old tumbledown house. They weren’t especially interested in saving old bulbs. I, on the other hand, certainly was. I got permission and started raking and bagging.

I don’t even remember seeing leaves up until now. For two years following re-planting, pretty much nothing. Now, these beautiful flowers.

Most Texas gardeners, if they recognize this bulb at all, will call it by the name of “naked lady lily.” However, it’s not a true member of the Lily family. It’s actually in the Amaryllis family along with Crinums, Leucojums (summer snowflakes), Narcissus and of course, Amaryllis.

Like most of the other bulbs in that family, it needs bright sun when its leaves are growing actively — late winter and early spring. That allows you to grow them beneath deciduous shade trees in beds that would otherwise be too shady for plants requiring sun in the summer.

It’s best to plant these into garden loam soil that you have amended with organic matter and expanded shale. Naked ladies don’t do especially well in heavy clays, especially during extended periods of heavy rains. They’ll grow best in the long term if you provide them good moisture and a well-draining site. No supplemental feeding is needed. These are low-demand ladies.

The best time for digging and dividing these beauties is a month or two after the spring foliage has dried and gone dormant. That means you’ll want to mark their locations so you can find and dig them in late June or early July. Set the bulbs a couple of inches below the soil surface. Set the bulbs 10 to 15 inches apart and allow them to form clumps as they fill in. As pricey as the bulbs are, it may take you a few years to develop a large massed grouping. It certainly makes you appreciate what you see in the old estate gardens.

Plant all types of Lycoris where they can remain undisturbed for as many years as possible. The bulbs across the rural road from our house had been there for decades. No one had tended to them, yet they had bloomed faithfully for the past 45 years that we’ve lived here — until the big dozer blade destroyed their surroundings. I saved all I could and they’re starting to produce results now, two years after the fact.

Here’s hoping you’ll have a spot for these sweet beauties to call home at your place.

This story was originally published September 1, 2023 at 6:00 AM.