Lycoris (plant)


Lycoris is a genus of about 20 species of flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Amaryllidoideae. They are native to eastern and southern Asia in China, Japan, southern Korea, northern Vietnam, northern Laos, northern Thailand, northern Myanmar, Nepal, northern Pakistan, Afghanistan, and eastern Iran. In English they are also called hurricane lilies or cluster amaryllis. The genus shares the English name spider lily with two other related genera.

Description

They are bulb-producing perennial plants. The leaves are long and slender, 30–60 cm long and only 0.5–2 cm broad. The scape is erect, 30–70 cm tall, bearing a terminal umbel of four to eight flowers, which can be white, yellow, orange, or red. The flowers divide into two types, those with very long, filamentous stamens two or three times as long as the tepals, and those with shorter stamens not much longer than the tepals. The fruit is a three-valved capsule containing several black seeds. Many of the species are sterile, reproducing only vegetatively, and are probably of hybrid origin; several additional known hybrids occur.

Selected species

, the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families recognizes 22 species and one hybrid:
;formerly included
A few names have been coined using the name Lycoris but referring to species now considered better suited to other genera. Here are links to help you find appropriate information.
;Hybrids
  • Lycoris × chejuensis chejuensis K.H.Tae & S.C.Ko - Korea
In phylogenetic analyses based on chloroplast genes, Hori et al. found that all species of Lycoris they examined were nested within L. radiata. They suggest that the species of Lycoris presently recognized may not be distinct.

Cultivation and uses

Lycoris are extensively cultivated as ornamental plants in China and Japan, and also in other warm temperate regions of the world. In Japan, they are widely used at the edges of rice paddy fields to provide a strip of bright flowers in the summer, and over 230 cultivars have been selected for garden use. They are locally naturalised in the southeastern United States, where they are often called hurricane flowers, due to their blooming period coinciding with the peak of hurricane season. In China, people often use them as decorations in festivals or celebrations.

Legends

Since these scarlet flowers usually bloom near cemeteries around the autumnal equinox, they are described in Chinese and Japanese translations of the Lotus Sutra as ominous flowers that grow in Diyu, or s=黄泉, and guide the dead into the next reincarnation.
When the flowers of Lycoris bloom, their leaves would have fallen; when their leaves grow, the flowers would have wilted. This habit gave rise to various legends. A famous one is the legend of two elves: Mañju, who guarded the flower, and Saka, who guarded the leaves. Out of curiosity, they defied their fate of guarding the herb alone and managed to meet each other. At first sight, they fell in love with each other. God, exasperated by their waywardness, separated the miserable couple, and laid a curse on them as a punishment: the flowers of Mañju shall never meet the leaves of Saka again.
It was said that when the couple met after death in Diyu, they vowed to meet each other after reincarnation. However, neither of them could keep their word.
In commemoration of the couple, some call the herbs "mañjusaka", a compound of "mañju" and "saka", instead of their standard name, p=shísuàn. The same kanji name is used in Japanese, where it is pronounced manju-shage.
Some other legends have it that when a person sees someone that they may never meet again, these flowers would bloom along the path. Perhaps because of these sorrowful legends, Japanese people often used these flowers in funerals. The common Japanese name for Lycoris, higanbana, is literally "higan flower", or a decorative flower of the afterlife in Sukhavati.