Terrence Thompson's Photography

I discovered toad lilies when I spotted an advertisement in a garden magazine. Toad lilies were described as exotic plants with small orchid-like flowers that liked shade and bloomed late. The photo showed gracefully arching leafy stems with lovely flowers covering the length of the stems. I was hooked. I knew I had to get toadies for my shady garden in Independence, Missouri.  I loved the funny name and I was frustrated trying to find plants that bloomed late in the season in my shady garden.

That was about six years ago. Since then I have planted more than 40 toad lily plants representing more than 18 various species, hybrids and varieties. I love their first burst of flowers, some as early as August when few other things are blooming, and I love that some are still blooming when the first hard frost hits, sometimes as late as November. They look wonderful with the two other perennials that bloom late in my garden, monkshood (Aconitum fischeri) and white snakeroot (Eupatorium rugusa).

It is said that toad lilies get their name from a tribe in the Philippines that believes rubbing the juice from the flowers and leaves on their hands helps in catching frogs by attracting them and making them less slippery. So that gives the plant a practical side if you need to catch some frogs in your garden.

Toad lilies are in the Tricyrtis genus with the formosana, hirta and macropoda species most often offered for sale. Hybrids or cultivars of these three species make up most of what is generally in cultivation in the United States. Toad lilies are natives of the eastern Himalayas of Nepal and China and extend their range from Japan and south to Taiwan and the Philippines. They are very popular in Japan where many variegated sports have been discovered. They are rhizomatous and die back in in the winter.

I started out buying a half dozen hirta species plants by mail order. The hirta species grows about two feet tall and produces a clump of arching stems that develop dozens of flowers along the length of each stem. That was what I saw advertised in the magazine.

Toad lilies flowers are small, no bigger than shirt buttons, and come in a wide variety of colors ranging from white and to very dark purple. Many flowers show a white background heavily spotted with various shades of blue to purple such as shown by the formosana and hirta species. Some hybrids and cultivars show flowers that are white with a darker shading of blue or pink along the flower edge along with these spots. There are also pure white flowered varieties and some that just have a slight blush of color along the edge of white flowers.

The small flowers demand that toad lilies be planted in the front of the garden or close to a path so they can be seen close up. On this website are close-up photos of various toad lily flowers that have bloomed in my garden. All photos were taken by me.

The hirta species are showy when then are covered with flowers along the stem but generally bloom only a couple of weeks. The formosana and macropoda species and their hybrids and cultivars produce flowers in bracts at the end of the stem instead of along the entire stem. They do not show as many flowers at the same time as the hirta type but will keep on producing flowers at their tip ends for many weeks.

After that first mail ordered purchase I later found a good source for toadies much closer to home at local garden centers.  I have found a wide selection of hybrids and cultivars of toad lilies, some blooming along their stems like the hirta species and others blooming at their tips like the formosana and macropoda species.

No matter what type of toady you pick they all prefer well-drained woodland soil with lots of organic material. They also like to be constantly moist, which can be a challenge in the often hot, dry summers of our area. I mulch my entire garden heavily in the winter with cotton burr compost, which all my shady plants seem to love. Since I also grow a dozen varieties of astilbe in my shady garden (which also require lots of water) I have laced hundreds of feet of soaker hose throughout my garden to help meet moisture needs.

Toad lilies are not without their problems, though. Although I have found them to be generally not bothered by insects, rabbits or deer some varieties seem to be more susceptible to fungus disease than others. The fungus attack the leaves, generally from the bottom, turning the leaves yellow and later brown.

Because the fungus attacks at the bottom first, it makes me think that the problem is related to dampness from morning dew and lack of air circulation to dry the moisture quickly. A regular dousing with a good fungicide helps as does pulling off the diseased leaves and discarding them someplace away from the garden. I have had the worst problems with a hybrid called 'Blue Wonder' but some degree of the problem has been shown by most plants. Mostly it just affects the look of the plant. However, smaller, newly planted young plants are susceptible to being completely defoliated by the fungus if they are not treated.

My toadies didn't like the extreme heat we got in August this year when the temperatures hovered around 100 degrees for almost two weeks. They didn't wilt but they apparently stopped growing during this heat wave because some bloomed much later than they normally do. That later blooming combined with the early frost nip we received in mid-October put a premature end to a flowering stand of formosana along the lower edge of my garden where the frost hit the worse.

Although toadies are advertised to grow and bloom well in shade, as we all know there are various types of shade. Plant them where they get at least some dappled sun during parts of the day and maybe some full sun for a couple of hours in the morning. If they are placed in too dark of a spot they may grow and even bloom but they will not flourish. If you plant some of the new variegated types the variegation will not show much unless they are placed where they can get some full sun for a while in the morning.

The variegated cultivators generally can be disappointing if you expect to see prominent marking on the leaves. Generally they show some subtle white along the edge of the leaves. Two of the better variegated cultivars in my experience are the 'Guilt Edge' and 'Samurai'.  A cultivar offered called ‘Guilty Pleasure’ was advertised as having leaves that came out lime green in color and turned to “gold” as the season progressed. In my garden the leaves on this cultivar just stayed lime green the entire summer. The leaves are much lighter in color than the other toadies I have in the garden, so I am satisfied with that.

However, more recently I found a variegated toadie called 'Imperial Banner' that has most prominent variegation I have seen yet. The leaves have a dark green edge with a bright white streak through the leave's centers. I have purchased five small plants of 'Imperial Banner' and will be running a test on them over the next few years to see how they do.

One of the real benefits of the named cultivars is that many do not get as tall as the normal species.  They  make lovely specimen plants when tucked in along the edges of the garden. The formosana species get about three feet all in dappled sun and as tall as four feet in places where they get full sun in early morning. So the shorter variegated cultivars are perfect for planting in front of the taller species.

When you are shopping for toad lilies be sure to check if they are hardy to the zone you garden in. One of my favorite toadies is Tricyrtis formosana 'Amethystina'. It has drop dead gorgeous flowers tipped with dark blue on the petal ends with light blue spots on a white background through the remainder of the white flower. It starts blooming in mid July and continues to bloom into fall. Unfortunately it's a Zone 7 plant and won't survive most winters in my zone 6 area. A small garden center close to my house used to offer these plants in July. I would treat them as annuals by putting some in pots on both sides of the shady bench in my garden. That way I can enjoy the flowers up close when I sit on my shady bench afternoons reading a novel, something I do most summer days after the gardening is done.

Beside the Armitage book, another good book is that covers toad lilies is W. George Schmidt's An Encyclopedia of Shady Perennials. There also is excellent information about toad lilies on the Internet. Two webs are the Suite 101 at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/701/29595, and the Chicago Botanical Garden website at http://www.chicago-botanic.org/pr/press_releases/tricyrtis.html.

The Chicago Botanical Garden information is particularly good because the garden has ran 10-year-long tests on which toad lilies did the best in the Midwest. “Toad lilies are noteworthy perennials for their late-season flowers, and with few exceptions are superb garden plants for the Midwest,” the report said. “Excellent ratings were given to Tricyrtis formosana and T. hirta ‘Miyazaki’ because of their superior floral displays, robust habits, winter hardiness and disease resistance. Flower production on the other toad lilies was usually low at peak bloom, but extended flowering periods of six to 10 weeks were not uncommon.”

Schmidt's book An Encyclopedia of Shady Perennials mentions some toadies produce yellow flowers, the flava and oshumiensis species and a cultivar named 'Amanagawa'. I think I want some of those plants. The problem, however, is there are just too many kinds of toadies and my garden is getting too full to plant them all. But I can try, can't I?

Bibliography
Books
Armitage, Allan M. Armitage's Garden Perennials. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press Inc., 2000
Schmid, W. George An Encyclopedia of Shade Perennials. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press Inc., 2002
Chattao, Beth Beth Chatto's Woodland Garden. London: The Octopus Publishing Group, 2002
Cramer, Harriet L. The Shadier Garden. New York: Crescent Books, 1997

Primary Source
Personal experience of growing toad lilies in my own garden.

Web Pages
As cited in the text.
 

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