Lily

Lilies proper are the genus Lilium: tall herbaceous perennials, from about thirty centimetres to nearly two metres high, that rise each year from a scaly underground bulb and carry large, often fragrant flowers in white, yellow, orange, pink, red or purple. Most species belong to the temperate Northern Hemisphere, from Europe across Asia to Japan, India and the Philippines, and from southern Canada through much of the United States, usually in woodland, on mountains or in grassland. Plenty of plants called lilies, the lily of the valley and the water lily among them, sit outside the genus altogether. The starchy bulbs are cooked as a vegetable in China, and those of several species are used in Chinese medicine. Lilies are the flowers most often seen at funerals, as they were among the Greeks and Romans, and in Western Christianity the Madonna lily has stood for the Virgin Mary since medieval times. A Roman tale held that every lily was orange until a drop of Juno's milk whitened one. In England white lilies were hung above doorways to keep witches out, and in Wiltshire they were grown to keep ghosts away. In magical practice lilies are planted to guard a home from ghosts, evil and the evil eye, and a fresh flower is worn to undo a love spell aimed at a particular person.