Happy Easter

The Easter Lily

Easter morn with lilies fair
Fills the church with perfumes rare,
As their clouds of incense rise,
Sweetest offerings to the skies.
Stately lilies pure and white
Flooding darkness with their light,
Bloom and sorrow drifts away,
On this holy hallow'd day.
Easter Lilies bending low
in the golden afterglow,
Bear a message from the sod
To the heavenly towers of God.

-Louise Lewin Matthews-

The Easter Lily, also known by its Latin name Lilium longiflorum, has become the traditional Easter flower. With all the different flowers available in the spring garden, it is this beautiful, white flower, that has come to symbolize the spiritual values of Easter: purity, life and renewal. The flower's trumpet shape is a reminder of the heralding of Jesus, returning triumphant to Jerusalem.

Native to Japan, Easter Lilies were imported to the United States until 1941, when World War II prompted Americans to start growing their own bulbs.

Today, nearly all of the 15 million Easter Lily bulbs grown in America are produced by just ten farms along the California-Oregon border. The bulbs are harvested in the fall, and then shipped to commercial greenhouses in Michigan, California, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where they are planted in time to bloom for Easter.

Easter Lilies are the fourth largest selling potted plant in America, upstaged by the popular Christmas-time poinsettias, mums and azaleas. –Source: Holiday On The Net.

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