File:Lemon Lily. Lilium parryi - Flickr - gailhampshire.jpg

Lilium parryi is a rare species of lily known by the common names lemon lily and Parry's lily. It is native to the south-western United States and northern Mexico where it is a rare sighting in moist areas in mountain habitat.

It is included in the CNPS Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants on list 1B.2 
I received this lovely note from a botanist friend in Florida,

" I was delighted to receive your photo of Parry's Lily. By coming across this relatively rare species, you've connected yourself to a thread of rich frontier, botanical history. Please indulge me a moment to reflect on one of my favorite topics- the frontier botanists (that's frontier in the Western United States sense of the word). In the case of the lily you captured with your Lumix, we have to consider the far from ordinary career of one Charles Christopher Parry. He was born in 1823 in Admington, Gloucestershire. His father, Joseph, was an Anglican minister. When young Charles was 9, the father moved his family to America where Charles would eventually graduate from medical school. He set up his practice in Iowa, but the west called him, and he soon began taking trips out into the frontier. He had a profound love of plants and plant collecting. He eventually became one of the leading collectors of flora for what was then Colorado Territory. In 1849 he joined the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, exploring the nether regions of Arizona and California. It was during this phase of his exploring adventures that he collected the lily which was named for him by another botanist, Sereno Watson. Periodically, he made a return trip to Iowa and his patients, but his true love was botany, not medicine. He lived to age 67, dying in 1890 in Davenport, Iowa."