Lily of the valley

Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis (ˌkɒnvəˈleɪriə_məˈdʒeɪlᵻs), sometimes written lily-of-the-valley, is a woodland flowering plant with sweetly scented, pendent, bell-shaped white flowers borne in sprays in spring. It is native throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere in Asia and Europe. Convallaria majalis var. montana, also known as the American lily of the valley, is native to North America. Due to the concentration of cardiac glycosides (cardenolides), it is highly poisonous if consumed by humans or other animals. Other names include May bells, Our Lady's tears, and Mary's tears. Its French name, muguet, sometimes appears in the names of perfumes imitating the flower's scent. In pre-modern England, the plant was known as glovewort (as it was a wort used to create a salve for sore hands), or Apollinaris (according to a legend that it was discovered by Apollo). Convallaria majalis is an herbaceous perennial plant that often forms extensive colonies by spreading underground stems called rhizomes. New upright shoots are formed at the ends of stolons in summer, these upright dormant stems are often called pips. These grow in the spring into new leafy shoots that still remain connected to the other shoots under ground. The stems grow to tall, with one or two leaves long; flowering stems have two leaves and a raceme of five to fifteen flowers on the stem apex. The flowers have six white tepals (rarely pink), fused at the base to form a bell shape, diameter, and sweetly scented; flowering is in late spring, in mild winters in the Northern Hemisphere it is in early March. The fruit is a small orange-red berry diameter that contains a few large whitish to brownish colored seeds that dry to a clear translucent round bead wide. Plants are self-incompatible, and colonies consisting of a single clone do not set seed. In the APG III system, the genus is placed in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Nolinoideae (formerly the family Ruscaceae). It was formerly placed in its own family Convallariaceae, and, like many lilioid monocots, before that in the lily family Liliaceae.