"The ordinary White Lily, _Lilium candidum_," writes Parkinson, "scarce needeth any description, it is so well known and so frequent in every garden. The stalk is of a blackish green color, having many fair broad and long green leaves. The flower stands upon long green footstalks, of a fair white color, with a long pointell in the middle and white chives tipt with yellow pendants about it. The smell is something heady and strong. It is called _Lilium album_, the White Lily, by most writers; but by poets, _Rosa Junonis_, Juno's Rose." How perfect is this flower! Texture, form, hue, sheen, perfume--all express exquisite loveliness. The lily refreshes us with its cool beauty and its purity and lifts our thoughts upward to heaven. Gerard describes eight lilies in his "Herbal" (1597), all of which were known to Shakespeare. Certainly among _Perdita's_ flowers was the martagon, which takes its name from the Italian _martagone_, meaning a Turk's turban. This lily is also called "Chalcedonian" and "Scarlet martagon" and "Turk's Cap," by Parkinson, who tells us that the "_Lilium rubrum Byzantinum Martagon Constantinopolitanum_, or the red martagon of Constantinople, is become so common everywhere and so well known to all lovers of these delights that I shall seem unto them to lose time to bestow many lines upon it; yet because it is so fair a flower and was at the first so highly esteemed, it deserveth its place and commendations. It riseth out of the ground bearing a round, brownish stalk, beset with many fair green leaves confusedly thereon, but not so broad as the common White Lily, upon the top whereof stand one, two, or three, or more, flowers upon long footstalks, which hang down their heads and turn up their leaves again, of an excellent red crimson color and sometimes paler, having a long pointell in the middle compassed with whitish chives, tipt with loose yellow pendants, of a reasonable good scent, but somewhat faint. We have another of this kind, the Red Spotted Martagon of Constantinople, that groweth somewhat greater and higher with a larger flower, and of a deeper color, spotted with divers black spots, or streaks, and lines, as is to be seen in Mountain Lilies." The martagon belongs to the tiger-lily class, whose characteristics have been so imaginatively brought out by Thomas Bailey Aldrich: I like the chaliced lilies, The heavy Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow. For they are tall and slender; Their mouths are dashed with carmine, And when the wind sweeps by them, On their emerald stalks They bend so proud and graceful,-- They are Circassian women, The favorites of the Sultan, Adown our garden walks. And when the rain is falling, I sit beside the window And watch them glow and glisten,-- How they burn and glow! O for the burning lilies, The tender Eastern lilies The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow.