I dug up some of my grandma there's naked ladies when selling her house. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a thumb planted for a few weeks, the foliage was all dead so I went ahead and cut it off when putting them in the ground. will they still come back next year?

I love naked ladies! I've seen a few people in my area that have them but I never found anyone who would share with me. Here, after they are established they can grow in rock hard soil with no water or attention whatsoever, my kind of plants!

They put out foliage in the spring and then die back over the summer so you won't even know they're there and then late summer they will put out big, pink blooms, just blooms without foliage. So darned pretty.

So I ordered one online and planted it 2 years ago. I watered it once a week that first spring to help it get established. It died back late spring and disappeared so I stopped watering except very occasionally. I started watering the spot again in late summer but it didn't come back. Sometimes stuff happens. That was 2 years ago. But it's back now!! 2 weeks ago it began sending up foliage and seems to be just fine!

So, there is a good chance you will get to enjoy them eventually. I would give the a little spritz of water every week or so just to keep them slightly moist so they can establish some roots and then leave them be until you see something happen. I'm told they can rot easily with too much water. Happy gardening.

Hi & welcome, Kelli!

Naked ladies is a memorable nickname shared by several species of Lycoris, and some plants from other genera too. If you recognize which ones you dug from the various selections in the amazing plant database on this site, the feedback could be more specific. We can see that you're in OK, but where was gramma's house? When did you dig and when did you plant?

If you think they were some kind of Lycoris, they could need a longer adjustment period than the bulbs you might see at a box store. That has been my experience with L. squamigera, L. aurea, and L. radiata. But worth the wait for the novelty of having gorgeous blooms suddenly sprout "out of nowhere" - the origin of the nickname.

A search for "naked ladies" in our database:
https://garden.org/plants/sear...

kellierae91
This is such a great example of how confusing common names are. When I read Tiffany's comment about about Lycoris species my reaction was huh? Because the naked ladies I grew in California were


These were massive bulbs that were common along roadsides and withstood drought from spring to fall and emerged when most everything else was bleached and spent from the long dry summer.
Regardless of what you have, I agree that you should plant them asap and hope for the best. Good chance they'll skip a year of bloom, but many bulbs have amazing abilities to rebound.