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Lycoris radiata
Also called Spider Lily, Hurricane Lily, Red Magic Lily
Lycoris radiata is a bulbous perennial from East Asia, grown for its bright red, spider-like autumn flowers that appear before the leaves. Grow it in a sunny, well-drained spot and leave the bulbs undisturbed, since they bloom best when left alone.
Lycoris radiata, known as the red spider lily, red magic lily, corpse flower, or equinox flower, is a plant in the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Amaryllidoideae. It is originally from China, Japan, Korea and Nepal and spread from there to the United States and elsewhere. It is considered naturalized in Seychelles and in the Ryukyu Islands. It flowers in the late summer or autumn, often in response to heavy rainfall. The common name hurricane lily refers to this characteristic, as do other common names, such as resurrection lily; these may be used for the genus as a whole.
All plant species belonging to the genus Lycoris, including L. radiata, are native to East Asia. The plant was first introduced into the United States in 1854 following the signing of the Treaty of Kanagawa, a peace treaty brokered between the United States of America and Japan which effectively opened up Japanese ports for trade with the U.S. It is alleged that Captain William Roberts, a botany enthusiast and an ally of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry of the U.S Navy, returned to the U.S with only three bulbs of the red spider lily from this travels abroad. The bulbs were then planted by his niece who found that they did not bloom until after the first good rain in the fall season. L. radiata has since become naturalized in North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, and many other southern states of the US. Since the Japanese variety of L. radiata is a sterile triploid, the introduced plants were also sterile and could only reproduce via bulb division.
Like all members of the genus Lycoris, the bulbs of Lycoris radiata are poisonous, mostly due to the presence of the toxic alkaloid lycorine. If ingested, bulbs can cause diarrhea, vomiting, convulsions, and - in severe cases - even death.
L. radiata plants also contain the alkaloid galantamine, which has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (USDA) for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The plant is cultivated in China for galantamine extraction. Plants of the amaryllis family are all known to contain varying quantities of naturally occurring galantamine, and the compound can be extracted in trace amounts from the leaves and roots of L. radiata, but is most abundant within the bulbs. L. radiata has also shown promise in preliminary studies of cytotoxic effects on cancer cells, though further research is required.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lycoris radiata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
