Not only do I have naked ladies in my flower garden, but they are really putting on quite a show.
The naked ladies, of course, are not the kind you would see in a strip club. They’re plants and are among the most strikingly beautiful flowers in Southern gardens. The story of how they got here from Japan is pretty interesting as well.
First, I am a little bit like hummingbirds in the sense that I love red flowers. Naked ladies are about as red as red gets, and the arrangement of the crinkled petals and the extraordinarily long, sweeping stamens in a graceful flower cluster makes for an irresistible sight. I can’t drive by a colony of naked ladies without looking.
The common name derives from the fact that the flower stalks appear long after the foliage has died back. They just pop up from the soil buck naked, with no leaves to accompany or clothe them. Another common name is spider lily, for the arrangement of the long stamens, which in someone’s fanciful imagination, resembles a spider like granddaddy longlegs. Some people call them hurricane lilies because they flower during the peak of the hurricane season in the South.
Naked ladies are in a category of heirloom favorites known as pass-along plants. Heirloom nurseries have the bulbs, but if you know someone who has them, it’s as simple as asking if they could spare a few bulbs.
The best time to dig the bulbs is when they are dormant in early fall after the flowers have faded, or in late spring after the foliage has died back. You only need a few bulbs. They spread by making new bulblets each year and will colonize a small area in a few years.
The bold red flower clusters of naked ladies are a sight to behold.The bulbs are toxic to moles and voles, so they pretty much take care of themselves. I have seen them growing unattended around old homesteads and even in cow pastures.
Naked ladies have special meaning for me. For about 20 years, I went deer hunting every year at the historic Oak Lawn Plantation near Jacksonboro. My trips were scheduled to coincide with the beginning of buck season in mid-September. Oh, the stories I could tell of that enchanted land of Spanish moss, black-water swamps, alligators, tons of deer, and some of the finest camo-clad fellows I have known. I could write a book about my treasured memories of hunting at Oak Lawn.
Every year when the naked ladies popped up in our flower garden, my wife Jane would always say, “Well, the naked ladies are up. It must be time for you to go to Oak Lawn.”
Naked ladies were first introduced into this country in 1854 by a sailor from New Bern, North Carolina, on Commodore William Perry’s historic mission to open trade with Japan for the first time in two hundred years. He saw them growing semiwild and brought home three bulbs. He gave them to his niece who apparently was an avid gardener. Over time, she passed new bulbs along to others, and the rest is horticultural history.
For me, the annual appearance of naked ladies will always mean, “It’s time to go to Oak Lawn.”
Dennis Chastain is a Pickens County naturalist, historian and former tour guide. He has been writing feature articles for South Carolina Wildlife magazine and other outdoor publications since 1989.
