How to Identify Lily Plants
Lilies are one of the larger flower families in the botany world, and the wide array of variations and cultivars can make identification a little difficult at times. More often than not, lilies are confused with irises as they share many similarities. Knowing a few details about the anatomy of the lily family can help you accurately determine whether a particular specimen is indeed a lily. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Count the flower petals. Technically, a lily is going to have three sepals and three petals. Amateurs may have trouble noting the distinction, but sepals represent the outermost layer of the flower whereas petals are more inward. Many plant varieties do not have layers; instead they grow all petals from a single plane around the flower base.
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Examine the leaves closely. Lilies have veins that run parallel to one another along the length of the leaves. Other plants may have veins that radiate out from a single source at the base of the leaf, and still others may have one vein that dissects the leaf with lesser veins running perpendicular to this main vein.
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Look closely at the inside of the flower, particularly inspecting the stigma, which is at the very center of the inner flower. The stamens---the little toothpick sized reproductive organs within the flower---grow out of the stigma. The stigma on lilies is unique, having three distinct lobes or sections.
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Rule out irises by looking at the plant base. Among all of the variations and hybrids in both the iris and lily families, it is possible to consider all of the above factors and still arrive at an incorrect determination. Irises, though, grow out from the base in a characteristic flat plane. They are almost fan-like and two-dimensional at the base, whereas lilies grow from the base in a looser, freer form.
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