Turk's Cap lily

The day lilies have been blooming in gardens and along the roadsides since the beginning of the month, but the native wild lilies are just starting their blossoming season, and if you want to see these rarer beauties, you have to know where to look. One of my favorite members of the area's Liliaceae is the Turk's Cap Lily, a reference to its "completely reflexed petals"—the description in the Peterson wildflowers guide—and the usual place I go to observe Lilium superbum—a description that any botanist would find apt—is the boardwalk at the local Henne preserve. But a couple of weeks ago, when I went there to check on their progress, I discovered something horrible: the local deer, a.k.a. "hooved rats," had eaten all the flower buds. This is an ongoing problem, and researchers have documented similar acts of carnage by White-tails, even to the point of causing local floral extinctions. There are simply too many deer afoot in the area, and we could use a few good predators to cull the herd. Fortunately for me and for L. superbum, at least a few members of the species did not attract hooved attention. I won't reveal the spot, just in case the local deer are viewing this post.