A NOD TO THE NAKED LADIES IN MY YARD

Woowza, I should just stop with the title.  “Naked Lady” is a common name for Lycoris squamigera, an amaryllis flower native to Japan.  It is also called the “resurrection lily” or “surprise lily”.  The genus name “Lycoris” is the name of Mark Antony’s mistress (I wonder if there is a hidden meaning here?).  This time of year, they pop up as if my magic to form a delightfully gaudy pink flower on a stark, leafless stem.  The lack of leaves is probably why they are called “naked” or it could be a reference to the mistress.  They do have leaves… just not at the same time as the flower.  The leaves come up in spring and almost always sucker me into misidentifying them as daffodils.  The leaves do their thing (photosynthesis) and store energy in the bulb below ground.  The leaves die back in summer.  Then the flowers pop up as if overnight in the heat of summer with the energetic cost paid by the bulb.