Two red, six-petaled flowers with white-and-yellow throats open at the top of a tall stalk, beside yellow buds, above long strap-shaped leaves and a closed green bud. A caterpillar with a blue-and-yellow body, red head and feet, and long bristles lies on one leaf; an oval cocoon with a brown pupa sits at the center; a small striped caterpillar and a white cocoon rest on other leaves. A moth with eyespots on its wings flies at lower left, and a yellow-and-black fly at lower right. Maria Sibylla Merian drew the plant for plate 22 of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (1705), engraved by P.

Sluyter. She wrote that these red lilies grow wild from a white bulb, with leaves that shine like silk, and that bulbs she brought back flowered in Dutch gardens before putting out their leaves. The bristly caterpillar, whose hairs she found as hard as iron wire, spun its cocoon on June 4 and gave the moth on June 30. The small striped caterpillar, found in the grass near the lilies, produced the fly in August.

Merian noted that the big caterpillar looked nothing like the one on her banana plate, yet became almost the same kind of moth. It is in the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, DC.