We recently learned an old name for pink rain lilies from Russell Studebaker, Tulsa garden writer and a great friend of ours.

Russell saw a pot of them in full bloom at a garden club meeting. “The owner had gotten them long ago from her family in Missouri, but she never knew their actual name,” he wrote us.

“They called them ‘house pot lilies’ because they were always grown in an old pot that no longer served for cooking – probably enamelware, agateware, or graniteware that had developed a hole. Can’t you just imagine how nice those little pink flowers would look blooming in a blue enamelware pot?”

Rain lilies bloom when rain drenches their roots, so it makes sense that they’d thrive metal pots – although ours bloom just fine in regular terra cotta, as you can see here.