Lilies: meaning, season in Ireland, pollen and cats

Every part of a lily is toxic to cats, and that single fact should decide more lily purchases than it does. The pollen alone will do it. A cat brushing past an open flower picks up grains on its coat, grooms them off, and can be in kidney failure inside two days. Vets in Ireland see cases every year, most of them from bouquets given as a kindness.

Everything else about the lily is a matter of taste. That part is not.

What lilies mean

The white lily has carried purity and restored innocence in Christian tradition for centuries, which is how it became the standard funeral flower across Ireland and Britain. The Madonna lily in religious art is the same idea in another form. In Irish practice the meaning is now more general: a white lily says sympathy, and no family reads further into it than that.

Colour shifts the message. Pink and yellow lilies read as celebration rather than mourning and are common in birthday and thank-you bouquets. Orange lilies are simply autumn colour. Only white carries the funeral association strongly enough that you would not send it as a get well gift. The calla lily and the peace lily are not true lilies at all, though both are used the same way.

Season in Ireland

Lilies flower outdoors here from June to September, and Irish gardeners grow them well. Almost none of that reaches a shop. The cut lily trade is Dutch glasshouse production, running every week of the year from bulbs held in cold store, which is why a lily costs roughly the same in January as in July and why availability never fails.

If you want an Irish-grown lily, you will find it at a flower farm stall in July, not in a florist. There is more on what does grow here in Irish flowers in season.

When to send them, and when not to

Lilies are the safe choice for sympathy: they are formal, they last, and they open over the week rather than fading in it. That last point is practical. An Irish funeral often moves from death notice to burial in two days, and a lily sent in bud for a reposing on Wednesday will be at its best in the family home the following weekend.

Do not send them to a house with a cat. Do not send oriental lilies to a hospital, where scent policies exist in most wards and a strong bouquet is unwelcome to the patient in the next bed. Think twice about them for a small flat, where the perfume of six open orientals fills every room.

They are a poor choice for anyone who works with fabric or wears pale clothes, for the reason below.

The pollen

The orange anthers inside an open lily stain cloth permanently. The pigment is not water soluble and rubbing it wet sets it for good.

Pull the anthers off with a tissue as each flower opens, before anyone leans in to smell it. Florists do this as a matter of course, which is why a florist's lilies look cleaner than a supermarket bunch. Removing them does not shorten the flower's life and it keeps the petals from freckling as the pollen drops.

Care

Cut 3cm off each stem on a slant and put it straight into deep water with the sachet in. Strip the lower leaves. Lily stems are thick and take up plenty of water, so top the vase up rather than letting it drop.

Keep the vase out of direct sun and away from a radiator, both of which force the buds open at once and cost you days. A cool hall gains you two or three days over a warm sitting room.

As each flower goes over, snap it off at the base. The buds further up the stem open in sequence, and a stem with two spent flowers hanging on it looks finished long before it is. With that done and the water changed every second day, twelve days is normal and a fortnight is common. See our vase life by flower table for how that compares.