Well I am wondering what kind of orange lily you have. If they are orange tiger lilies.....they spread by the little bulbils that form on the stem. These things spread like crazy. Perhaps your other lilies died out because of over-crowding or something. I can't say, I have ever had a lily change colours on me, once I have actually seen the bloom and what colour it is. Sometimes I get bulbs that are miss labeled.....but thats a different problem.

Lilium Longiflorum isn't the most cold hardy lily. You are more likely to get a marginally cold hardy variety of Longiflorum since the lilies you "fell in to" were most likely florist lilies.

Do the orange blooms you have otherwise look/act like a Longiflorum (i.e., a sweetly scented trumpet shape).

Asiatics and tiger lilies (that commonly come in orange colors) are not scented, have a different shaped bloom, and a different arrangement of blooms about the stem.

That would help you determine whether you have a miscolored Longiflorum or if your easter lilies died over the winter and you are seeing a different lily altogether.

-Helen

thanks for your responses. i'll do more investigation, post a pioture.

i know my lilies didn't die, they are coming up everywhere they've been planted. some are white and some are orange. i know for a fact that i would never have planted all these orange lilies. i also know that when they went into the ground, they were white flowers.

it's just one of those strange happenings, i guess...isn't the first one, won't be the last one.

thanks for the responses,
maryanne

my neighbor swears that tiger lilies will cross pollinate my cultivated lilies and turn them orange. Is this an old wives tale? After reading about their spreading habit I wonder if that's more likely.
thanks.

Hi i have a question about lilys changing colors. I bought a plant with 3 blooms of tiger lilys. when i bought them there were orange ( that is why i bought them in the first place cause i love tiger lilys) I planted them in 2 different locations. 2 in back year and one in the front. after the died and the next year when they came up they were not orange they were yellow. they look just like they did when i bought them and planted them but yellow. why would they change to yellow. They still look like the tiger lily just a differnt color =( this really upsets me cause I really love the orange tiger lilys. and help is welcomed cause i want the back to being orange lol ty

Maybe someone who hybridizes lilies and has some genetic know-how will chime in. It strikes me that if you purchase Asiatic Lily collections, even though the selection starts out with a nice mix, the orange are dominant and the most prolific of the colors and will return year after year throwing out new bulbs and stems, while the pinks, yellows, creams, peaches, etc. will gradually get crowded out. I saw this happen with my Father's massed planted "collection". For a while other colors would show up, but never as vigorous as the orange.

I also just noticed in an old bulb catalog that the LA Hybrid mixtures so popular for naturalizing are crosses of Lilium Longiforum (Easter lily) and Asiatics. Perhaps the genetics are there for Easter lilies to color revert as well. To mass produce to meet consumption demands, there's no telling whether or not each type is reliably color stable anymore.

In my own experience, I don't mass plant Asiatics. I purchased some Pixies in cream, pink, yellow, and bronze/red a few years back. The clumps are separated from eachother and used as accents for other plant groupings, but all in the same bed as a large area of Tiger lilies. All of the Pixies are still the colors I purchased; Stargazer, Lollypop, Monte Negro and so on are exactly as they should be as well - no cross pollinating, crowding out.

Hi All
With respect to the original question (and the follow up by daniellalell) regarding Easter Lily changing color,

L. Longiflorum (Easter Lily) is so distinctive from the types of lilies that commonly come in orange (Asiatics & Tiger lilies) that it should be easy to tell the difference between a miscolored Longiflorum and an Asiatic or tiger lily. Foliage, bloom shape, bloom arrangement on the stem, and scent, are all very different.

The lily divisions classify the hybrids of those species that are closely related and hence intermingle easily. The Longiflorum Division in comprised of hybrids of Longiflorum and Formosanum. Longiflorum itself is a species lily. "Named" longiflorum are cultivars (selections) of this species. All of the cultivars, and all Longiflorum in general, come only in white. (This isn't true for all species lilies - which many times have color variability.)

Crosses across divisions, such as Longiflorum (Div. 5) with Asiatics (Div. 1), happen via embryo rescue, not in nature. Lilies sold as colored "Longiflorum" are actually LLO's and LLA's, where the second cross back to Longiflorum (also by embryo rescue) may produce an easter lily habit (bloom, shape, scent) but with color.

Some of my interspecific hybrids show some color variability. I have Triumphator (an LO) where one bulb has blooms this season with very little pink in the throat - where that is usually much stronger. However, I haven't had any of my LO's, orientals, or species (including asiatic species), change color to something else entirely.

As for beds with mixed collections of the same type of lily (say asiatics), without labeling each bulb and checking its color from year to year there would be no way of distinguishing between a bulb "changing color", one color spreading better than the others, or if these cloely related lilies were mixing and getting new plants from seed. Also, hybrids that make viable seed, even without pollination from a different lily, produce plants NOT true to type. Reproduction by leaf axil bulbil and stem or bulb bulbets IS true to type (clones).

Just my $0.02

-Helen

Does anyone have anymore information about this subject? I was doing a Google search on Easter lilies changing color and came across this posting. My mother gave me 2 white easter lilies 2 years ago. I planted them in the ground. I have absolutely no other lilies and have been in this house for 6 years now. I can assure everyone I have not planted any other lilies of any kind at all. I planted them in my existing flower bed where I have a variety of roses, bouganvillas, gardenias, pride of barbados, yellow bells and some herbs. Last year, they came back with additional planst and all of them were white. As sure as I'm living, this year, they came back again, but the flowers are a mix of the original white easter lilies, in addition to red lilies and yellow lilies! They all look exactly the same, except the colors are all different. I'm trying to figure out what is happening with these...any input?

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lily/msg060852557072.html?11

Here is a link that might be useful: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lily/msg060852557072.html?11

Every year I plant my "white" easter lily in my flower bed. I have quite a collection now but every single one of them has come back with orange flowers. Who's saying this can't happen? I guess I'm not the only one.

I have white easter lilies planted every year for the last ten (?) years at two separate homes. No daylilies at one house orange and yellow daylilies at the other. Where there are daylilies the easter lilies have turned orange and red with white also on the red! At the home without daylilies the easter lilies stayed white.
Don't know if this was coincidence or not but thought it was interesting. The red and white coming up from the same plant is really interesting.

When I planted madonna lilies 5 years ago the blossoms
were white. Over the past 3 years they have changed to
a very pale yellow. Can this be due to a soil deficiency or change in ph?

Ok not a lily guy..but a couple of years ago I found a wild tiger lily?..out in the forest by a stream ..dug it out took it home and planted it..the next year flower came true to form and color...this year we had 100+ heat for over a week..and the flowers came out white and bigger..I have lived here at this house for the last five years and I have never had any Lilly's of any kind.so don't see it being. A dormant lily that popped up in its place.

My mother has been planting one Easter lily brought home after Easter service ever year for the past 8 years. The next year they bloom a tropical pink. I find it interesting how no meaningful answer has popped up but it is good to know that it happens. She was wondering about pollination or soil nutrients.

Me too. For over 10 years we have had a large returning stand of orange tiger lilies,(not sure of type, bought at Sams Club) and last year a couple bloomed yellow, this year ALL but a few bloomed a deep pink and the remaining few bloomed yellow and white. No orange blooms...none. Would like the orange blooms to return, is this a question of soil acidity or???? (the area is in a sprinkler system so lack of or too much water is not an issue). In the same yard but not adjacent we have many Stella de oro's if that matters and they are yellow. And adjacent to the tigers is a very large stand of (evergreen) azaleas, which bloom pink just before the now pink lilies. The deep pink lilies are still pretty and now a little mysterious.

After Easter our house is filled with Easter Lillie’s from the church. They are beautiful and white. We plant them in our gardens and they thrive. We do lasagna gardening so they get plenty of nutrients and absolutely no chemicals. Every year after we plant them and they come back the blooms varie from pink to maroon and yellow to purple and maroon and many different colors. For those who say this can’t happen visit our gardens. It’s ok by me as I like the colors better than the white (we have absolutely no white ones past the first year. ). I just wish there was an explanation. I am wondering if pot grown and forced blooming causes the bulbs to not let color

Well I happened upon this website & thread because I had a conversation with a fellow gardener today about her lilies and now many of my lilies "reverting", and the most common colour they seem to become is orange.

I have HUGE clumps of lilies, and loads are orange and I don't remember planting that many orange ones, so I kinda wondered if some didn't revert from something else, but now I KNOW they have, because I had one huge clump that were called Kaveri I had bought a few years ago. Kaveri is yellow with red in the centre of each petal. They were so huge & thick last year that I thought I would probably have to divide them this year.... and I was going to dig out some of the other clumps that are orange to plant the Kaveri lilies.

Well, my Kaveri lilies all started opening yesterday ... and they are ALL orange. There is no way that I made a mistake or that little bulblets from other lilies could have gotten in there, they were a separate & distinct clump.

I am honestly so upset I can hardly see straight. I have another few clumps of lilies that are pink with freckles -- which I now know were LA or OT lilies in various colours, but the blooms are all pink and MUCH smaller than they used to be, so they have also "reverted". My friend had ivory coloured white double-petalled lilies, and they are all now single orange ones (and she doesn't like orange, so she knows she never bought them,a nd her neighbourhood is new, there were no other gardens there before)

Do reverted lilies ever come back to their proper state? Does anyoe know the cause? I'm wondering if maybe the parent they use to hybridize is a drought-tolerant Asiatic, because it's been incredibly dry here, and maybe it figures it needs to revert to save itself?
I don't know, but I am so upset. I'm hoping that the other Kaveri clumps don't revert!

This shows what Kaveri is supposed to look like
https://www.longfield-gardens.com/plantname/Lily-Kaveri

Oh and I should mention that I have one clump of lilies about 40 feet away from these reverted ones, that were something else that reverted, but t's funny because there are 2 true Tiger Lilies that am up int he middle of them (I could tell because the stems always have the little bulbils that Tiger Lilies are known for.) Just wanted to mention that -- I don't mind the tiger lilies, I'm hoping to dig out the clump and keep only the tiger lilies, because I have too many of the plain reverted orange lilies, the tigers are more interesting looking!

I planted white Lilly bulbs as well and they bloomed orange the next season

Bulbs got from friend purple.

My white Easter lilies always come back orange.

Had many years of white lilies.

Today that all bloomed pink!