Have you ever seen a toad lily? With a name like that, do you imagine an unusual or less-than-beautiful bloom? Toad lilies are, in fact, lovely and resemble very small orchids; they are ideal if you ...

If someone had named them forest orchids or woodsy lilies instead of toad lilies, perhaps more of us would be growing them. “Sometimes they name plants very strangely,” said Julie Morgan, whose ...

Part of toad lilies' appeal is their timing. The flowers emerge as summer comes to a close and most flowering plants are grinding to a halt. The late-flowering perennials that remain are mostly daisy ...

A late-blooming perennial with unusual flowers, toad lilies do share traits with their namesake amphibian — but are a lot more graceful. No one knows exactly how the plants acquired their name, but ...

Every month at the Pitt County Arboretum, we hold what we call a Northside Plant Walk, where we walk through the Arboretum (often including a loop on what is known as the Northside Walking Trail) and ...

The names of spring flowers are nothing if not poetic. Coral bells, lily of the valley, glory of the snow — those and others inspire poets as well as gardeners perusing catalogs or shopping at ...

While sitting at a red light the other day, I watched the driver ahead of me reach out of her car window and run her hand through the wispy cloud of rosy-purple blooms on the Gulf muhly grass planted ...

Look around your garden, and you may find a surprising number of plants in the lily family, Liliaceae. There's a year's worth of ornamental genera in this diverse group: tulip, fritillary, agapanthus, ...

Every month at the Pitt County Arboretum, we hold what we call a Northside Plant Walk, where we walk through the arboretum (often including a loop on what is known as the North-side Walking Trail) and ...