Blackberry Lily
Common Name: Blackberry Lily
Scientific Name: Belamcanda chinensis
This Asian perennial, which Thomas Jefferson called "Chinese Ixia," is actually a member of the Iris family. Jefferson first received seed from nurseryman Bernard McMahon in 1807, during his second term as President of the United States.[1] These were sown in an East Front oval flowerbed at Monticello.[2] Today the blackberry lilies that are found naturalized throughout Monticello are believed to be descendants of Jefferson's original plantings.
The Blackberry Lily is a hardy, herbaceous summer-flowering perennial with red-spotted orange flowers on stalks, followed by unusual seed heads that resemble blackberries, but the seeds are not edible.
- Text from Center for Historic Plants Information Sheet
Further Sources
- Leighton, Ann. American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century. Amherst, Mass.: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.
- Seeds available for purchase at Monticello Museum Shop
- Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants
Footnotes
- 1. Betts, Garden Book, 337. See also Edwin M. Betts, Hazlehurst Bolton Perkins, and Peter J. Hatch, Thomas Jefferson's Flower Garden at Monticello, 3rd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 54.
- 2. Betts, 335.
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