Don't know for sure what kind this is, but it had barrowed in right at the junction of the stem top and flowerhead. It went up instead of down (about an inch) and made two orange/brown egg sacs containing thousands of tiny, little eggs. I suspect it's some type of moth but I'm not much of an entomoligist.

The hot dry weather really was hard on the insect world, but one can never let the guard down; kind of underscores the importance of burning our fall cleanup material, too. The last pic shows a safe area where I cut the stem and the disected stem portion with the egg sacs.





Just for the (immaterial) records, the affected plant was a Royal Sunset.

Very few adult lepidoptera have chewing mouth parts. Their egg laying tools don't tend to do the damage, the larve do that best.
So, I'm guessing a beetle of some sort, not my line either.

This problem seems to show up every year or two. Here is an article on borers that may attack lilies http://www.mobot.org/gardening...