Lots of rain-lilies

Rain-lily colony; click for greater detail.

Yesterday I ended with the line: “It’s now a few days past this weekend’s welcome rain, and suddenly instead of a few stray rain-lilies Austin is covered with thousands of them.” Following a link in that post, Lynda asked: “Do they have a fragrance as other lilies do?” I answered that they do, though it’s subtle. She also asked: “Do they come up en masse? If so, will you be sharing a picture?” To that I answered: “Yes, sometimes these flowers come up en masse, and in fact I hunted in likely places for such a colony yesterday but didn’t find one. I found plenty of groups, but the flowers were too scattered for the effect I wanted to get in a photograph. My best group pictures of rain-lilies are from a decade ago, and I’ve long regretted not encountering such dense colonies again. One of these days….”

Well, I didn’t have to wait long. Yesterday morning at the Perry Lane cul-de-sac on the west side of Mopac at 45th St. I found a colony of rain-lilies, Cooperia drummondii, as dense as the ones I remember from a decade ago. The picture above mostly speaks for itself, but I’ll add that the presence of so many rain-lilies in close quarters filled the air with their scent, and the morning breeze carried their fragrance so magnified to me that I didn’t even have to bend down to smell them.

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman