In the Beauty of the Lilies

2025 Gray's Lily did not reappear in 2026.

 On the Sunday after July 4, my church sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I was surprised to learn was still in the Methodist Hymnal. I thought it had been exiled by pacificists, along with Onward Christian Soldiers.
 Our pastor, a former soldier himself, told how he once included that hymn in a worship service in Alabama, and one of the ladies of the church walked out in protest. "I'm not singing a Yankee song," she said. 
 Indeed, Battle Hymn of the Republic echoes John Brown's Body, a favorite of Union soldiers. It also evokes the University of Georgia fight song, Glory, Glory to the Bulldogs, which might offend my pastor, an Auburn man.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. 
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

 The fourth stanza evokes the Song of Solomon and the Sermon on the Mount: 

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me. 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
while God is marching on.

 I'm not much of a romantic, but every summer I'm reminded of that verse when lilies bloom on my favorite mountains. The "Father of Botany," Asa Gray, discovered a lily in 1840 on Roan Mountain, and his students named it for him. Gray was a colleague of Charles Darwin, yet his understanding of evolution was that it was guided by God's hand.

 Gray and Julia Ward Howe, the lyricist for the Battle Hymn, now are pushing up daisies in the same graveyard, Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston.

 Gray's Lily (lilium grayi), Turk's Cap Lily (lilium superbum), and Michigan Lily (lilium michiganense) bloom in June and July on Elk Knob. ln the spring, we are also blessed with yellow Trout Lilies (erythronium americanum), which Dr. Gray would tell us are not true lilies. 

 Elk Knob and Roan Mountain are among the few places that Gray's lily can be found. They seem to prefer mile-high balds, and Elk Knob is in the process of going bald. If you're looking for a science project, please come study the evolution of Elk Knob. 

 For the past several years, I've been taking a census of Gray's Lilies on Elk Knob.  These perennials are already considered rare, and I'm concerned that the population in 2026 seems to be in retreat. I found only four in 2026, compared to 33 flowers in 2025, 18 in 2024, 17 in 2023, and 12 in 2022.

 One patch that produced nine lilies in 2025 showed only one in 2026. Two prolific stalks that produced five and seven flowers did not sprout this year.  

 This also was a lean year for flame azalea, which turn the mountaintop orange each June.  

Turk's Cap Lily

 My census is not scientific, and I generally count flowers visible from the trail. Except for a few patches, I don't bushwhack to find them. I don't want to trample them, and this year the state park put up fences and signs to protect endangered plants.

Two lilies that bloomed in a new location this year were "harvested," not sure if they were eaten by deer or picked for a dear. 

This Gray's Lily never bloomed, probably because of drought.

Skeletons of the Beech forestnon the summit.

 

 

  Elk Knob is crowned by a beech forest, and many of the trees have been killed by a blight. As a result, the undergrowth is unusually thick, including a new generation of beech trees. I fear that this is choking out the lilies and the azaleas, which seemed to be retreating away from the summit. 

 The Turk's Cap lilies have certainly moved downhill, and we had one bloom in the parking lot.  I counted more than 50 blossoms along the trail, but there were none in the usual thicket past the 1.5-mile marker.