The Lily And The Amaryllis
While exhibiting a pretty Amaryllis to a person fond of flowers, and with some desire to know about them, though too modest to permit one to say she had botanical tendencies, the writer was asked: "You say this is not a lily but an amaryllis, and that it belongs to a very different family of plants; but it looks like a lily to me. How can you tell it is not a lily?" It was a good chance to explain that there was often not much difference in nature between families of plants placed widely apart by botanists; that in some cases organs free from one another would make one distinction, while the same organs united would be the leading distinction in another. And it was the case here. In the Amaryllis the tube of the perianth was united with the ovarium, and thus the seed vessel seemed to be below the flower, while in the lily the perianth or showy floral part was not united, and hence the seed vessel would seem to be placed inside or above. In this way we could see at a glance that the lily was not an amaryllis, or a plant of the amaryLis flower was not a lily.