BoyPete wrote:

I have 2 lilies. One has thrown up a flower about a week ago. Don't know
what time it opens, but it starts to close about 5pm. Why do they open and
close. The other one has two flower heads at the surface but they don't
open. Can someone explain all this, or point me to a website. Ta

Most day-blooming lilies don't open until the sun is fairly high in the sky
(10 - 11am, ime) and often close again well before 5pm. It depends,
though, on the variety, your latitude, cloud & tree cover _and_ the age of
your lilies. In my experience, plants that would only throw up a few
blooms over the summer, would often only open for a couple of hours a day.
Once they've become well established and have multiple flowers at a time
(I've had 20 off a single plant, at once) they tend to stay open longer,
too.

You can either wait for these to be more developed, or you can search for
lilies that open earlier or later. If you want to try tropical lilies, go
for a night-blooming one (they don't open until _after_ the sun sets).
--
derek