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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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