Late last winter, our friend and fellow gardener Bruce Gray brought us a one-gallon pot with some green grassy plants in it. They weren’t very tall and kind of looked like little green grassy plants. They took up residence on our front porch until we could decide what to do with them on a more permanent basis.
Weeks passed as we planted our vegetable plants and so on, and the little grassy plants did fine, but nothing spectacular. With everything else that was going on, I didn’t think much about it. Then, they sent up a flower stalk.
When the bud opened into a lovely pink flower, suddenly, it got my attention. At that point I used my plant identifier, Picture This, to find out more about it. Aha, at least I finally knew the name.
It was a pink rain lily. I made sure to water it regularly, hoping it might bloom some more. Much to my delight, it sent up another bud or two, then a few more, and before long, as the photo shows, we had a small pot topped with gorgeous flowers.
At that point, I knew that it would become the subject of an article soon. Rain lilies are part of the genus Zephyranthes. There are a few different species.
Picture This identified our rain lilies as Z. carinata, but when I first looked at Wikipedia, it showed Z. rosea and also called it a pink rain lily, so if you are using the common name, you could get different varieties.
Z. rosea is native to Peru and Colombia (though another common name is “Cuban zephyrlily” – go figure). According to Wikipe.