This section is from the book "Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers", by Caroline A. Creevey. Also available from Amazon: Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers.
Family, Lily. Stamens and pistils on different plants. Sepals, 6, persistent after withering. Six stamens with white anthers. The fertile flowers contain only the rudiments of stamens. Styles, 3, long, club-shaped, stigmatic along one side. Capsule oblong, about 1/2 inch long, 3-lobed and 3-valved. Leaves, upper ones lance-shaped or linear, flat, sessile, or short-petioled; the lower broad at apex, obtuse, tapering into narrow petioles. May to July.
A long stem, 4 feet high or less, rises from a tuberous root-stock, bearing a bractless raceme several inches long, of small, feathery, white, staminate flowers. The raceme of pistillate flowers on a shorter stem is stiff and erect.
Massachusetts to Florida and westward.
 
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