- Western red lily grows wild in 36 states, including Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana, as well as almost every East Coast state. The plant also grows across Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. The Northern Ontario Plant Database website reports that western red lily inhabits prairies, roadsides, open woods, barrens and meadows. This lily is absent from all five westernmost U.S. states and nine other states.
- The lily originated in the northeastern United States and spread slowly westward across North America. As the population of the western red lily has decreased, it became listed as a protected species in Saskatchewan; an endangered species in Maryland, New Mexico and Tennessee; threatened in Kentucky and Ohio, exploitably vulnerable in New York; and under special concern in Rhode Island.
- Western red lily plants bloom from June to August in most areas of its distribution. The plants grow from 1 to 3 feet tall topped by bright red and orange flowers with scarlet speckles near the center of the 2-inch-wide blossom. The petals narrow to a stemlike appearance before attaching to the actual stem, making it so you can see through the bottom of the flower.
The leaves of the lily appear randomly attached along the lower stem sections and in bunches along the upper sections. They have parallel veins and grow to about 3 inches long and 1 inch wide.
The western red lily produces one to two fruit capsules an inch long that split open vertically to drop clusters of flat seeds. - The Native American Cree tribe calls western red lily "mouse root" because voles -- also known as meadow mice -- and other rodents gather, eat and spread the bulbs of the plant, according to the Northern Ontario Plant Database. The plant also reproduces by way of bisexual flowers pollinated by wind and flying insects that gather nectar from the center of its blossoms.
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