Lilies symbolize purity and innocence, and also have strong spiritual associations.
They are the perfect choice when simplicity is the keynote.
Madonna lilies were the only variety available to medieval artists, but during the past two centuries, many different species and varieties have been discovered and bred.
They now come in a bewildering range of types and colours.
This has - thankfully - removed most of their associations with death, which largely began because their scent was so 'useful' where corpses were concerned.
Lilies look wonderful in most styles of arrangement, either alone or mixed with other flowers.
I still relish the sight and scent of Madonna lilies in tall classical vases Before the era of the Dutch still-life, no artist had ventured to portray the lily in anything less than a sacred environment.
Lilies had long been adopted by the Church and were promoted enthusiastically as an emblem of the Virgin Mary's supreme purity.
The Greeks had established the lily's divine links centuries before, however, with the legend that they had first grown from drops of milk spilt from the breast of the mother-goddess, Hera.
Juno, Hera's Roman equivalent, had exactly the same story told of her - the Romans even called the lily Rosa junonis, or Juno's rose.
Aphrodite, the Roman goddess of love associated with real roses, was said to find the lilies' cold perfection so unappealing that she amused herself by giving them their rather phallic stigmas.
By the Middle Ages the mother of the gods had been firmly replaced by the Virgin Mary, and the lily was used to illustrate her virtues.
Its luminous white exterior was flushed with gold inside, like the warmth that co-exists with the Virgin's purity; its scent.
like her virtue, could neither be replicated nor eliminated.
Lilies thereafter appeared in most images of Mary and, with or without her, will always be associated with simplicity and purity Innocence, simplicity & youth.