Lilies: What to Know Before You Buy

Lilies are the most useful large flower in the trade and carry two risks that nobody mentions at the counter — one to your clothes and furnishings, and one that is genuinely life-threatening to cats. Both are manageable and both should be stated before anybody buys them.

The Cat Warning, First

True lilies — the genus Lilium, which covers Asiatic, Oriental, Stargazer, Easter and tiger lilies — and daylilies, Hemerocallis, are acutely nephrotoxic to cats.

Every part is implicated: petals, leaves, stem, pollen, and the water in the vase. The dose required is very small. A cat that brushes past an arrangement and later grooms pollen from its fur has ingested enough to be at risk, and acute kidney failure can follow within a day or two. Without prompt veterinary treatment it is frequently fatal.

This is not the mild irritant situation that most pet-toxic plant lists describe. If there is a cat in the house, lilies do not enter it — there is no safe shelf and no version of this worth risking.

Dogs are far less affected, suffering gastrointestinal upset rather than kidney failure, but the distinction is not worth relying on in a household with both. Where there is any doubt, our Pet-Friendly Blush Garden — Cat-Safe Bouquet removes the question.

The Pollen Stains Permanently

Lily anthers carry a heavy rust-coloured pollen that stains fabric, and it does not wash out reliably.

Remove the anthers as soon as the flower opens. Pinch them off with a tissue — not with fingers, which transfers the pigment — and discard them. Any competent florist does this before the flowers leave the shop, and it is worth checking that they have.

If pollen does land on fabric, do not brush it or wet it. Both drive it into the fibres. Lift it off with sticky tape, then put the item in sunlight, which fades the remainder surprisingly well.

Lily Types and How They Behave

Four groups, and they are genuinely different products.

Oriental — the big heavily scented ones, Stargazer being the famous example. Enormous flowers, powerful fragrance, and the longest vase life of the group.

Asiatic — smaller, upward-facing, in a wide bright colour range, and essentially unscented. The practical choice where fragrance is unwelcome.

Longiflorum — the classic white trumpet, the Easter lily, elegant and moderately scented.

OT hybrids — crosses between Oriental and Longiflorum, combining trumpet form with size and scent. Increasingly the commercial standard.

Calla lilies and peace lilies are not lilies at all despite the names, and importantly they are not nephrotoxic to cats in the same way — though calla does contain irritant calcium oxalate.

The Scent Is a Design Decision

Oriental lilies fill a room and then keep filling it. In a hall or a large open space that is an asset. In a small closed room, a bedroom, or anywhere food is served it is genuinely oppressive.

They are also among the flowers most often restricted in hospital and care settings, and strong fragrance is a recognised migraine trigger for a substantial number of people.

Where the form is wanted without the scent, Asiatic lilies are the answer and almost nobody asks for them by name.

Why They Are Good Value

Setting the warnings aside, lilies do something few flowers manage.

One stem carries several buds that open in sequence over a week or more, so a single stem is doing the work of several flowers and the display keeps renewing. Vase life runs ten to fourteen days, and a bunch bought in bud will still be producing new flowers at the end of the second week.

That makes them among the cheapest ways to fill a large space convincingly, which is why they anchor so much church, event and hotel work — the register of our Hotel Lobby Grand Arrangement.

Buying and Keeping Them

Buy with most buds closed and one just showing colour. A stem with everything open has spent most of its life.

Strip the lower foliage, use deep water, and keep them cool. Remove each anther as its flower opens, and remove spent blooms as they go over so the remaining buds get the resources.

They are not especially ethylene-sensitive, which is one reason they travel and hold as well as they do.

Where They Belong

Large spaces, halls, churches, hotel and event work, and sympathy arrangements, where the white trumpet forms carry a long-established association — the register of our Sympathy Standing Spray.

That association is also the reason to be careful sending them elsewhere. White lilies read as funeral flowers across a great many cultures, so as a celebratory gift to someone whose background you do not know, they are a poor default.