Lilies Across Cultures: Symbolism, History, and Botanical Heritage

Lilies Across Cultures: Symbolism, History, and Botanical Heritage

Throughout human history, lilies have carried profound symbolic, religious, artistic, and medicinal significance, yet the word “lily” has been broadly applied to many unrelated plants, obscuring the distinct cultural legacy of true lilies of the genus Lilium. The earliest known lily symbolism emerges in Bronze Age Minoan Crete, where the vivid red, recurved Lilium chalcedonicum, the only true lily native to the southern Aegean, appears prominently in sacred imagery such as the “Prince of the Lilies” fresco from Knossos. Long before classical Greek civilization, this lily embodied vitality, fertility, and ritual authority, reflecting early Aegean reverence for seasonal renewal and the generative power of nature. As Mediterranean cultures evolved, Lilium candidum, the Madonna Lily, became one of humanity’s oldest cultivated ornamentals and medicinal herbs. Native to the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, its pure white, intensely fragrant flowers were associated with divine beauty, motherhood, and healing in Greek and Roman thought; Classical authors like Dioscorides and Pliny described its use in poultices for burns, wounds, and inflammatory conditions. This species is almost certainly the “lily of the field” referenced by Jesus in Matthew 6:28, as L. candidum grew abundantly in ancient Palestine, while Lilium longiflorum, the modern Easter Lily, was entirely unknown in the Near East, being native only to Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and coastal Taiwan.

"O radiant Lily, how with the paltry art of my sober muse. Can I bring you worthy praise in song and verse? Your shimmering white is the reflection of snowy lustre, The sweet scent of your bloom a reminder of the woods of Sheba." – Walahfrid Strabo, 827 A.D.

In late antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages, Lilium candidum became one of the most potent symbols of Christian devotion, purity, and divine grace. In countless medieval and Renaissance Annunciation scenes, the Archangel Gabriel offers the Virgin Mary a white lily to signify her immaculate purity and role in the Incarnation. The flower soon became ubiquitous in ecclesiastical art, funerary sculpture, and liturgical decoration, where it represented innocence restored after death and the hope of spiritual rebirth. Its deep religious prestige corresponded with its long-standing presence in monastic medicine: medieval herbals praised L. candidum for treating ulcers, infections, and skin ailments, and modern phytochemical research confirms that the plant contains anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antioxidant compounds supporting these traditional uses. Linguistically and culturally, the Madonna Lily held equal prestige across the Near East and Balkans, where it was commonly called zambak (زنبق), a word borrowed from Persian zanbaq via Ottoman Turkish. In the Balkans, synonyms such as kirin and ljiljan emphasized the flower’s brilliance, purity, and archetypal perfection. The epithet Sultan (سلطان / sulṭān), implying sovereignty, authority, and elevated rank, appears in the long-cultivated RHS variety ‘Sultan Zumbak’ (Sovereign lily), a geographical form of Lilium candidum cernuum originating in the Turkish Caucasus and grown for more than 400 years. The convergence of terms such as candidum (“dazzling white”), zambak, and Sultan reflects a shared cross-cultural idea of the lily as both pure and sovereign, an archetypal flower whose whiteness connotes heavenly perfection while also carrying an aura of dignity, authority, and symbolic prominence.

Lilies and their symbolism in Asia

In East Asia, lilies acquired a distinct symbolic vocabulary independent of Mediterranean and Christian influence. In China, the lily (百合 bǎihé) symbolizes maternal love, family harmony, and “a hundred years of unity,” making it a traditional wedding flower and an emblem of domestic blessing. In Japan, white lilies symbolize purity, renewal, and remembrance, and several native species, including L. longiflorum, became well-established in poetry, folklore, and seasonal aesthetics. The cultural prestige of lilies in Japan reached a ceremonial peak with Lilium nobilissimum, the rare Teiō’yuri (帝王百合/Emperor Lily), a micro-endemic species from the small island of Kuchi no shima in the Ryukyu archipelago, and one of the rarest most endangered lilies in the world. During the Edo period, the lords of the Satsuma Domain annually presented bundles of these lilies and their bulbs to the Emperor as formal tribute, and the species was cultivated within the Imperial Palace gardens, giving it a localized symbolism of refinement, authority, and elite status distinct from the European tradition of purity.

History of Lily Cultivation in Edo and Meiji Japan

Japan possesses one of the oldest continuous traditions of true-lily cultivation in the world, and the Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods represent the classical and transitional phases of that history. In Japanese culture, the lily, written as 百合 (yuri or ユリ), carries a rich blend of natural, linguistic, and symbolic meaning. The word is commonly linked etymologically to yureru or yuru, “to sway,” evoking the motion of tall stems and heavy blossoms in summer winds. Beyond this descriptive origin, lilies were long associated with elegance, refinement, and quiet dignity. Their large, luminous flowers rising from upright stems made them natural emblems of purity, sincerity, and noble character, themes deeply embedded in poetry, seasonal aesthetics, and religious imagery. In traditional flower language (hanakotoba), white lilies in particular expressed innocence, virtue, and spiritual clarity, while other colors could suggest passion, intensity, or sorrow.

By the early Edo period, lilies were already well known both as wild mountain plants and as cultivated treasures. The great white trumpet lilies of southern Japan, such as Lilium longiflorum, L. formosanum, L. alexandrae, and L. nobilissimum, together with the dramatic spotted mountain species including L. auratum, L. speciosum, L. rubellum, and L. japonicum, attracted intense interest from samurai, court nobles, physicians, monks, and wealthy merchants. Botanical illustration flourished through the production of illustrated herbals (honzo zufu), in which lilies were depicted with careful attention to bulbs, stems, flowers, and habitats. Feudal lords maintained rare mountain lilies in castle and temple gardens as symbols of refinement and status, and some island endemics were cultivated in guarded collections. Edo horticulturists practiced bulb division, seed raising, and selection of superior forms, recognizing variations in fragrance, flower orientation, and coloration even before the advent of systematic hybridization. White trumpet lilies in particular acquired religious significance, becoming associated with purity, mountain kami, and summer temple rites, a symbolism that further enhanced their prestige and protection.

The Meiji Restoration brought Western scientific botany and global trade into direct contact with this long-established horticultural tradition. Japanese botanists such as Makino Tomitarō, together with foreign researchers including Siebold, Maximowicz, and Elwes, formally described and classified many species that Edo gardeners had long cultivated and distinguished in practice. At the same time, Japanese lilies entered the world market on an unprecedented scale. Bulbs of Lilium auratum and L. speciosum were exported in enormous quantities to Europe and North America, where they transformed Western horticulture and became the genetic foundation of the modern Oriental hybrid lilies. This sudden demand led to severe over-collection in the wild; entire mountainsides were stripped of bulbs, and several localized and island species were driven toward extinction. Yet the same period also marked the beginning of deliberate hybridization, as Japanese lilies were crossed with Chinese and Himalayan species, establishing the global lily-breeding tradition that continues today.

Culturally, lilies in both the Edo and Meiji periods were far more than ornamental plants. They symbolized refinement, seasonal beauty, and the impermanence of life, while also serving as objects of scholarly study and spiritual reverence. Rare forms were guarded like works of art, and island endemics were already recognized as precious and fragile long before the emergence of modern conservation science. The historical continuum from Edo-period natural philosophers and daimyō gardeners, through Meiji-era taxonomists and plant explorers, to present-day conservationists reflects an unbroken tradition of admiration, study, and protection of Japan’s native lilies.

Lilies in Japanese Myth, Folklore, and Symbolism

In Japanese tradition, lilies are surrounded by a rich web of folklore, symbolism, and poetic association, even though they never formed a single unified myth cycle comparable to that of cherry blossoms or chrysanthemums. Instead, they appear as sacred mountain flowers, spirit plants, and emblems of beauty existing apart from the ordinary world. Many native Japanese lilies grow in remote mountains, forest margins, and volcanic slopes, landscapes regarded in Shinto belief as liminal realms where the human world touches the domain of the kami. White trumpet lilies such as Lilium japonicum, L. auratum, L. longiflorum, and L. alexandrae were therefore associated with spiritual purity and the presence of mountain deities. In rural folk belief, the unnecessary cutting of a wild lily was sometimes thought to bring misfortune, storms, or illness, not because the flower itself was cursed, but because such an act offended the local spirit believed to “own” the mountain and its plants. In this sense, lilies functioned as informal kami, flowers, protected by custom and reverence rather than by formal shrine doctrine.

In classical waka and later haiku, lilies, especially yama'yuri, hime'yuri, and sasa'yuri, became symbols of solitary and hidden beauty. A recurring image is that of a single white lily blooming deep in the mountains, unseen by human eyes yet perfect in form and fragrance. This motif served as a metaphor for unrecognized virtue, quiet nobility, and the Buddhist theme of impermanence, suggesting that true beauty and worth do not depend upon being witnessed. The lily thus came to represent dignity in obscurity and the purity of a life lived without display.

In parts of Kyūshū and the Ryukyu Islands, strongly fragrant white flowers that open toward evening, including several trumpet lilies, acquired gentle associations with the spirit world. Their scent was imagined as capable of crossing the boundary between worlds, and their white color recalled funeral garments and ancestral purity. In some folk tales, a lily is said to bloom on the grave of a faithful lover or a wronged woman, returning each summer as a sign that the soul remains pure despite suffering. In these narratives, the flower is not the ghost itself but the lingering voice or presence of the departed, expressing remembrance and fidelity.

Island endemics such as Lilium nobilissimum, the Tamoto'yuri, were treated with particular reverence. Among the Tokara and Amami islands, elders traditionally warned children not to touch or collect these rare cliff-dwelling lilies, for to remove them was believed to anger the protective spirits of the island and invite storms, poor harvests, or other misfortune. Such beliefs functioned as a form of conservation by taboo, preserving rare plants through spiritual respect rather than law. Within Buddhism, although the lotus occupies the primary sacred role, lilies also appeared in temple art and poetry as symbols of purity, detachment from the defiled world, and the spreading fragrance of virtue. The upward-opening trumpet of the flower could be interpreted as a silent gesture of offering, a natural mudrā lifting itself toward the heavens.

During the Meiji period, Lilium auratum acquired the poetic title “Queen of the Mountain Lilies” (Yamayuri no jōō), an image that cast the great gold-rayed lily as the sovereign of summer flowers in the Japanese highlands. Across these layers of belief and symbolism, Japanese lilies consistently embody purity without fragility, nobility without pride, and a sacred beauty rooted in remote, untouched landscapes, making them enduring emblems of the spiritual and natural heritage of the mountains.

Comparative Account of Lilium alexandrae and Lilium nobilissimum

Among the most beautiful and geographically restricted of the Japanese endemic lilies are the Princess Lily Lilium alexandrae (Uke'yuri) and the Emperor lily Lilium nobilissimum (Teiō’yuri/帝王百合), two closely related white, trumpet-flowered species confined to the southern islands of Japan. Both belong to Lilium section Leucolirion and represent ancient insular lineages adapted to warm, ocean-influenced climates, steep coastal terrain, and forest margins.

Lilium alexandrae Wallace ex Coutts (1934), commonly known as Uke-yuri, is endemic to southern Kyūshū and the Ōsumi and Tokara island chains, including Yakushima, Kuchinoerabu, and neighboring islands. The name “Uke-yuri” is traditionally interpreted as “upward-facing lily,” referring to the characteristic orientation of its flowers, which are held at a shallow upward angle rather than strongly nodding as in many other trumpet lilies. The species was named in honor of Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and its scientific epithet commemorates this dedication. Plants typically reach 30–80 cm in height and bear two to five large, pure white, funnel-shaped flowers approximately 15 cm in length. The tepals are thick-textured and slightly recurved, the throat often faintly greenish, and the flowers are strongly fragrant, especially in the evening. Blooming occurs in midsummer, usually in August. In the wild, Uke'yuri grows on rocky slopes, forest edges, and volcanic soils, often in well-drained yet moisture-retentive substrates derived from andesite and basalt.

Lilium nobilissimum Makino (1940), the Empereor lily, is even more narrowly distributed, being confined to the remote islands of the Tokara and Amami groups, particularly Kuchinoshima and adjacent islets. It inhabits exposed coastal cliffs and steep volcanic outcrops where soil is shallow and drainage is extreme, yet humidity remains high under constant maritime influence. Stems are typically 30–60 cm tall and bear one to three very large, thick-petaled, ivory-white flowers about 12 cm in diameter. Unlike Uke'yuri, the flowers are more fully open and star-shaped, facing slightly upward or outward, and emit a heavy, sweet fragrance. The epithet nobilissimum, meaning “most noble,” reflects both the stately appearance of the plant and the high esteem in which it was held by early Japanese botanists and horticulturists. Flowering occurs in mid-summer, generally in July.

Historically, Tamoto'yuri was already under cultivation during the Edo period and was prized as a rare garden plant. Excessive collecting from the wild greatly reduced natural populations, and by the early twentieth century the species had become extremely scarce in its native habitats. Although limited natural regeneration was observed after the Second World War, it remains one of the most endangered of all Japanese lilies. Uke-yuri, while also rare and geographically restricted, persists across a somewhat broader range and occupies a wider variety of semi-natural habitats.

Together, Lilium alexandrae and Lilium nobilissimum represent relict southern island members of the Japanese trumpet-lily complex, distinguished by their upward-facing, pure white, powerfully scented flowers and their strict confinement to oceanic volcanic landscapes. Their isolation on small islands, coupled with historical over-collection and ongoing habitat vulnerability, makes them of exceptional conservation importance and of great evolutionary interest as survivors of an ancient subtropical lily lineage within the Japanese archipelago.

Crossing contents and cultures: Lilium longoflorium the Easter Lily

The modern “Easter Lily,” Lilium longiflorum, exemplifies how symbolic traditions migrate onto new botanical forms. Introduced to Europe in the early nineteenth century, the species was later grown commercially in Bermuda and Japan and finally established as a major bulb crop in the Pacific Northwest after World War II. Because L. longiflorum naturally blooms in spring and produces striking white trumpets, Christian communities readily transferred existing Madonna Lily symbolism to this new species. By the late nineteenth century, devotional literature promoted a popular legend that lilies sprouted in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed before the crucifixion, reinforcing its association with Christ’s passion and resurrection. Thus, while not historically the biblical lily, L. longiflorum became the dominant Western Easter Lily through horticultural availability, aesthetic suitability, and sustained liturgical use.

In the modern West, lilies were further codified in Victorian floriography, where white lilies represented majesty, virtue, innocence, and refined beauty, and red or orange lilies symbolized ardor, passion, and vitality, echoing the ancient Aegean associations seen in L. chalcedonicum. Lilies remain central in funerary symbolism, representing the soul’s return to purity and the hope of eternal life. In 2014, scientists from Ben-Gurion University gifted Pope Francis seeds of Lilium candidum gathered from wild Levantine populations, intended to bloom at the Vatican for the Feast of the Annunciation, an event that demonstrates the continuing role of lilies as symbols of diplomacy, heritage, and spiritual renewal.

Across time and gnerations: Lilies in Popular Culture

One of the most striking modern developments in lily symbolism appears in Japanese and broader East Asian popular culture, where the term yuri (百合, “lily”) has become an established emblem of romantic and emotional relationships between women. Originating in early twentieth-century girls’ literature, where lilies represented ideal feminine purity and emotional sensitivity, the association deepened in girls’ school culture through “S”-type romantic friendships and was later adopted by Japan’s early gay media; the women’s section of the 1970s gay magazine Barazoku was titled “Yurizoku no Heya” (“The Lily Tribe Room”). By the late twentieth century, manga and anime used lily imagery to signal intimate female relationships, and “yuri” became the recognized genre term for narratives of women’s love. As Japanese media spread across East Asia, the term entered Chinese (百合) and Korean (백합) with the same dual meaning of “lily” and “female–female romance.” This evolution shows how older associations of purity, femininity, and emotional refinement were transformed into a modern symbol of queer identity and woman-centered emotional experience.

Across civilizations, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Chinese, Japanese, Victorian, and contemporary, lilies have remained powerful cultural touchstones even as the specific species, meanings, and contexts changed. From the sacred red lilies of Bronze Age Crete to the immaculate Madonna Lily, from Japan’s imperial Teiō’yuri to the global Easter Lily, and from Victorian moral symbolism to modern queer identity, the lily’s ability to carry layered and evolving meanings illustrates its unique role as one of humanity’s most enduring floral emblems. Whether representing purity, renewal, maternal love, erotic vitality, imperial status, spiritual transformation, or the emotional lives of women, lilies reveal how a single genus, and sometimes even a single flower, can reflect the deepest expressions of identity, belief, hope, and cultural memory.

Works Cited

Apostolides, K. R., et al. “Medicinal Properties of Lilium candidum L. and Its Phytochemicals.” Plants 9, no. 10 (2020).
Botanical.com. “Madonna Lily (Lilium candidum).” Accessed 2025.
Dioscorides, Pedanius. De Materia Medica. 1st century CE.
Farmer Gracy. “The Fascinating Story of the Madonna Lily.” Accessed 2025.
Heraklion Archaeological Museum. “Prince of the Lilies Fresco.”
Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Madonna Lily in Medieval Gardens.” The Met Cloisters (2010).
Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia. 1st century CE.
Thursd.com. “Lily Flower Meaning, History & Symbolism.” Accessed 2025.
Tutuhaoyi. “Cultural Differences in the Symbolic Meaning of Lily.” Accessed 2025.
Western Garden Nursery. “Easter Lilies: A Plant with a Story and Many Names.” Accessed 2025.
Wikipedia. “Lilium candidum.” Accessed 2025.
Yee, Andrew Leong. “Early Girls’ Culture and the Lily Symbol in Japanese Media.” Journal of Asian Popular Culture (selected secondary references).