Sorting Michigan lily seeds

Winter is a great time to sort all the seeds you collected during the year. Today I was sorting Michigan lily seeds. Michigan lilies are a challenging plant all the way around. Michigan lilies create large seed pods and the seeds inside look like they’re stacked up in tubes.

Easy to collect, but their seeds take a double dormancy. They need to go through two winters to germinate. Supposedly there can be clever ways to fool them, but so far, I have just used patience And then more patience, because after you get them to germinate, they are very slow growing. In year one they usually aren’t much more than a single small leaf. The second year maybe a couple more small leaves. They seem to be more focused growing their bulbs.

But year three, you might get a single flower, But after that, wow, what a stunner. A tall plant with beautiful clusters of large overturned orange flowers. Well worth the wait!