John Adams, age 16, of Huntington Beach, California, for his question:
What sort of plants belong to the lily family?
The list of lily relatives is as long as your arm. But the floating water lily and the waxy white calla lily do not qualify as members of the genuine Liliaceae Family. The elegant Easter lily is classified in genus Lillium, with other true lilies. The entire family includes about 200 genera and some 2,500 species. One of its somewhat unlily like members is the onion, of the genus Allium.
The lily plants are monocots, or monocotyledons. This botanical term refers to the number of food compartments in the seed, or the first leaf sprouts of the seed embryo. Beans are dicots and their two cotyledons can be seen as separate parts of the seed. Monocots sprout from one cotyledon and have other features that set them apart from the dicots. The veins or vascular bundles in their stems and leaves grow in parallel straight lines, as in the grasses.
Members of the Liliaceae Family are monocots because they sprout from one seed part and their leaves have parallel veins. Many of them bear gorgeous flowers with fancy stamens, three showy petals and three matching sepals. Most are biennial or perennial herbs. The root may be a bulb, a corm or a fleshy rootstock. Some, such as the tulip, produce a single, eye catching flower. The pampered Easter lily and the speckled Turks cap, born free in the wild meadows, display several blossoms climbing up a single stem. The garlic bears a dainty little ball of palest violet flowerets. Yes, garlic is a member of the lily family. So are onions and leeks, asparagus and the towering tall yuccas of the desert.
Lily flowers bear capsules containing a few or many seeds. As a rule, the blossom can fertilize its seed cells with pollen from its own stamens. However, cross pollination is common. This may be done by the breezes. Gardeners often try for more gorgeous strains by shaking the pollen from one beauteous blossom onto another.
The seeds often take five years.or more to produce flowering bulbs. But lilies do not depend upon seeds alone. The fleshy scales of a lily bulb may be separated and coaxed to produce flowering bulbs in two or three years. Some produce daughter bulbs after the flowering seasons. The Easter lily may produce baby bulblets under the leaves on its flowering stem.
The tiger lily and a dozen or so other garden beauties are true lilies of the genus Lillium. The fragrant little lily of the valley is in the genus Convallaria and the plantain lily is in the genus Hosta. The onion is one of more than 300 Liliaceae species of the genus Allium. Altogether, the very successful lily relatives account for more than 12 per cent of all the monocots.