down the centre aisle
rows of potted lilies
Spring for sale
before daffodils sprout
before tree buds swell
©️2018 Ontheland
I wonder about where plants originate. Easter lily plants are probably grown in greenhouses and gardens across Canada and the United States, but the mass cultivation of their bulbs occurs in a farm region bridging California and Oregon.
“One hundred percent of all Easter lily bulbs used in the United States and Canada are grown on coastal bottom lands in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. Production of Easter lily bulbs has been controversial because pesticides used to grow the lilies are polluting streams that feed the estuary of the Smith River, California’s healthiest and most important river for salmon and steelhead…”
Prior to 1941 the North American supply of lily bulbs was from Japan.
Photo credit: Pixabay.com, tagged “Easter lily”
A response to Haikai Challenge #27 White Lily or Azalea
Ontheland 
Reblogged this on Frank J. Tassone and commented:
#Haiku Happenings #1 (4/4/18): Janice’s latest haiku for my current #haikai challenge!
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Thank you for the challenge :))
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My pleasure, Janice! Thank you for sharing!
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We rarely think about the origins of what we consume…even flowers come from somewhere. (K)
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I love all the interesting places curiosity can take us and I very much enjoyed the irony in your poem.
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Thank you 🙂
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Ah, such timeless, classic Beauty. 😎🥀😎🥀😎🥀😎🥀
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I once watch a show about how blue Lilies (now none existent, at least as it was then, the narrator said) in ancient Egypt were food for or only used by the royalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphaea_caerulea Maybe the lily in the link was a relative?
As with any plant you have to know when and how much to use of the properties you seek.
It is always interesting how the myth of any plants are adapted to the new places they are taken to.
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Perhaps there has been a shift from one extreme to another…from elitist possession of symbolic treasures to mass production and cultivation…
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Kind of like Holland’s Tulips?
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For sure 🙂
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