DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711050356

SECTION: CAROLINA COAST          PAGE: 2    EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: SONG OF A SAILOR 

DATELINE: RONALD SPEER                      LENGTH:   60 lines

AUTUMN OF GINGER LILIES DELIGHTS POOR MAN'S HUMMINGBIRDS

IF I WERE a Native American, this would have been the Autumn of the Ginger Lily at my home on Roanoke Island.

Never have the fragrant fall flowers been more aromatic or more beautiful.

The gorgeous white displays - as overwhelmingly opulent as orchids and four times the size - have blossomed on the starter plot along the rear deck I inherited when I bought the house four falls ago, and on the scores of transplants in front of the kitchen window and deep in the backyard woods.

Their beauty and their smell delight the senses of people - and for weeks have been the nightly target of dozens of what I call the poor man's hummingbird.

As the sun sets, Carolina sphinx moths by the droves comb the ginger lilies in search of nectar.

In the dusk, the sphinx moths look just like hummingbirds, although the real hummers head south around Labor Day. That's when the moths start flitting around the lilies, their wings whipping the air in a blur.

Like hummingbirds, the moths' bodies are about the size of a little finger. The sphinx moths are not feathered, but have the scrunchy gray bodies of ordinary moths.

And unlike hummingbirds, the moths have a proboscis that they unroll for about 3 inches to suck the nectar from the lily blossoms.

They're still gathering every evening, sometimes alone, sometimes with dozens of companions.

At times, like hummingbirds, their wings beat the air so rapidly that on a windless, quiet night you can hear a hum.

Until I moved here I had never heard of ginger lilies or sphinx moths. Now they've become my fall favorite, even though a perfect autumn has kept the mandevillas, the mums, the hibiscus, the roses, the impatiens, the geraniums, the vincas and the ordinary lilies bedecked with blossoms.

That has created a problem for me because now is when I like to replace my potted and boxed plants with my winter favorites, pansies.

Rain, sleet, snow and ice do not perturb pansies. I plant them by the hundreds - yellow, white, purple and blue - to provide an oasis of color during the dreary months ahead.

But it is hard to rip out a still-blossoming flower that has served me royally all summer despite hot weather and little rain to make room for pansies.

I've planted maybe 100 pansies so far, and they are starting to do their thing. But they won't be in their glory for another couple of weeks.

So while I deliberate about when to do the dirty on my still-blooming annuals, I spend my time admiring the perennial ginger lilies and their nightly visitors.

And the lilies ask for little. Come the first frost and they're soon history. But the stalk falls off on its own, the bulbs multiply, and come spring they'll double their numbers and prepare to take the stage again in the fall.

I haven't the foggiest idea what happens to the sphinx moths when the ginger lilies quit blossoming. I've never seen them feed on anything else.

But they'll be back next fall, after the hummingbirds weary of my yard and head for faraway lands where the winters are warm.

It's not necessary for me to understand the way it all works.

Mother Nature has long convinced me that she knows what she's doing.

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