Unfortunately it seems quite a few places have photos of Surprise Lily (Lycoris squamigera) mislabelled as Lycoris sprengeri. Does this have a yellow-green glow at the centre of the flower and are the blooms assymetric? Both are traits of squamigera, which can have blue on the ends of the tepals.

Lycoris sprengeri has a pink base colour with a varying amount of blue depending temperature. However, the colouration increases towards the centre of the flower and the blooms are a lot more symmetric than squamigera: https://www.pacificbulbsociety...

I'll check for additional photos, but I purchased it from a guy who knows his stuff as sprengeri. I don't recall any yellow-green, just a beautiful pink with the blue toward the tips. To my memory, the blooms have seemed symmetric. I'll check your link.

The L. squamigera pics at that link look much paler than the ones I have. I'll try to get an updated photo of my clump this summer -- it's a good 18x24" and probably needs dividing, but the bulbs are huge!

Thanks Jill

Finally got around to uploading a couple of shots from this past summer...

With the additional images, what do you think regarding the ID?

Thanks Jill. I'm now more convinced that your plant is Surprise Lily (Lycoris squamigera) rather than L. sprengeri.

There is some greenish-yellow toward the center, and the color gets intensifies towards the tips, not toward the center. If there are no distinguishing characteristics of bulb or leaf, then going by the bloom I'd say my seller got it wrong. If you agree, please move all my photos and comments (maybe not the underexposed one that was uploaded in error) to L. squamigera

sorry, only saw your response after I posted. Yes, I think you had the right call. I think my blooms are just more colorful than a lot of the database photos of L. squamigera, which have almost a washed-out look. And my eye wasn't really going to asynmetry in the blooms, but they aren't as symmeticrally arranged as, say, an amaryllis either.

Do you know if L sprengeri makes really huge (fist-sized or better) bulbs? If so, it's also possible I had both planted in that area and only the L. squamigera survived long-term, which would definitely add to my confusion. I remember digging a piece for a friend that was enormous, but the bulbs I divided last summer looked like the photos on the L. squamigera page.

I'm the first to admit, I need a better system of record keeping than just taking pictures here and there! My labels all seem to evolve into footed creatures.

Sorry I was hard to convince!

No worries Jill. I'll move your photos shortly.

Regarding bulb size, I have only had L. sprengeri for a little over a year from a seller I trust and so can't say from experience how big its bulbs get. However, from what I have been able to tell, L. squamigera would have bigger bulbs (not the least because it is a triploid and likely a hybrid of L. sprengeri and another Lycoris species).

When I divided the bulbs in that bed, they were mostly golf ball sized, some about twice that.

Now I'm wondering what kind of bulb I had in that bed 20 years ago that got so big and then didn't survive. Always some kind of mystery out there!

Interesting. Hopefully I will be able to tell you in future how my L. sprengeri compares to squamigera (I have both, but in different locations in the garden so they can never be mixed up).