swamp lily

plural swamp lilies

1. Any of various species of plants with showy flowers growing in wet habitats

   This is later on, when the days have lengthened and the dandles of swamp lilies flame in the ditches.

   2009, Alice Munro, “Fiction”, in Too Much Happiness, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart

   2 more examples

   Saururus (called in the United States, Swamp-lilies) is arranged by Linnæus in his second natural order […] Saururus […] is a very mild plant, and is often used in the shape of poultices, by the people of the United-States!

   1803, Benjamin Smith Barton, Elements of Botany, Philadelphia, pages 32–33

   Sympathetic ferns stretched their soft green fronds along the sides of the naked wood, as if they wanted to supply the fallen tree with some of the verdure of which it had been cruelly bereft, and even a gay, flowering swamp lily, that wonderful flaming flower that holds its chalice above all other wood blooms, bent just a little toward the one branch of that tree that still clung to the parent trunk.

   1924, Lilian Garis, chapter 16, in Nancy Brandon, New York: Grosset & Dunlap

2. Any of various species of plants with showy flowers growing in wet habitats:
   1. in genera Crinum, including Crinum americanum (southern swamplily), Crinum erubescens, Crinum pedunculatum (also river lily or mangrove lily)
   2. Lilium superbum (also Turk's cap lily, turban lily, lily royal, or American tiger lily)
   3. Ottelia ovalifolia, of Australia.
   4. Saururus spp. (lizard's tail)
   5. Zephyranthes atamasco (rain lily, Atamasco lily)