Miyanoshita, I have found them of a deep carmine.
The lovely Deutzia bells have ceased ringing as the Hydrangeas begin to appear, but long before the latter are finished the various Lilies—big temple bells—have come to take the place of the Deutzia’s fairy chimes. I never got used to those wonderful Lilies of Japan. My heart simply stopped beating the first time I saw, on a wild, rough hill-side above the sea, the splendid, stately blooms, standing up like royalty over the humbler flowers in the grass. No, surely Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these! And that these kings of the plant world should appear thus in all their rich state garments, crowned and sceptred, without a Court to set off their glory! … I saw whole fields of our Easter or Madonna Lilies (L. longiflorum), pure and white, bathed in the sunshine of an August day; I saw hill-sides, rugged and coarse with Bamboo grass, glorified with gold-patterned Lilium auratum; rocky cliffs above the bay at Dzushi, where they climbed fearlessly, but I dared not follow; I saw the crimson-spotted Lilium speciosum rubrurum, atilt in a scrambly waste, unconscious of the price their blooms would fetch in New York or London; the orange Day Lily (Hemerocallis fulva), on peasants’ roof-trees; L. Krameri, pink and flawless as a Court beauty, cuddled like a gipsy under a
