Flower Power: A Closer Look at God’s Design in the Lily

God created plants on day three of the creation week, about 6,000 years ago, each according to its kind (Genesis 1:11). Flowering plants are just one category of all created plants. What makes them special is that they all produce flowers that have seeds enclosed in a protective covering. The first mention of seeds is found in Genesis 1:11–12.

God created flowers as either complete or incomplete. A complete flower has all four main parts needed to reproduce: the sepal, petals, stamen (the male part), and pistil (the female part). An incomplete flower is missing one of these parts. Even though the flower may be missing one of the four main parts, it can still reproduce according to its kind. For example, papaya requires a male flowering tree to be planted next to a female flowering tree for pollination.

The four main parts of a flower.
Photo by Laitche, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons / Labels added to original

Let’s explore God’s design in one of the complete flowers, the lily, and discover how each part serves a God-given purpose. See if you can spot a pattern as we go! God’s creation is full of order, and the lily reflects that order, from the microscopic level all the way up to what we can see with our naked eye. The lily is one of the two flowers mentioned by name in the Bible. In Matthew 6:28–29, Jesus tells us, “Consider the lilies . . . even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

Sepals: God’s Petal Protector

The sepal is the protective covering that wraps around the developing flower bud. Sepals are found at the base of the flower and shield the bud while it is still growing. A lily has three sepals.

Petals: God’s Beauty

Petals are the most colorful part of a flower. They are attached at the base of the flower, just inside the sepals. Petals are often fragrant and attract pollinators such as bees, butterflies, hummingbird moths, and birds. A lily has three petals. Together, a flower’s petals are called the corolla.

In some flowers, like the lily, the sepals look so much like petals that they are often mixed up (see above image). When sepals and petals are indistinguishable from one another, we call them tepals.3 So it would be correct to say that the lily has three sepals and three petals, or simply six tepals.

Stamens: God’s Design for the Male Parts

The stamens are the pollen-producing part of the flower. Pollen is essential for plant reproduction within its kind (Genesis 1:11). This means the lily plant will always make more lilies. Each stamen has two parts: the anther, which produces and stores pollen, and the filament, a thin, threadlike stalk that supports the anther and keeps it upright. The lily has six stamens.

Stamen parts.
Subhrajyoti07, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons / Labels added to original

Pistil: God’s Design for the Female Parts

The pistil is responsible for producing seeds. When the pollen fertilizes the ovary of a lily, only lily seeds are produced. The pistil has three parts: the stigma, the style, and the ovary.

Pistil parts.
In Transit, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons / Labels added to original

• The stigma is the sticky or fuzzy tip that catches pollen from the anther. On the lily, the stigma has a three-part arrangement.

• The style is a tube-like stalk that connects the stigma to the ovary. When pollen lands on the stigma, the style grows a tube down to the ovary to deliver it. Remarkably, God designed the stigma to only allow pollen from the same kind of plant to pass through.4 This means a lily’s stigma would reject pollen from a rose because rose pollen cannot fertilize a lily’s ovules. This special design saves the plant from wasting energy.

  This is a significant challenge for evolutionary thinking. If life evolved through random changes over time, we would expect every stigma to accept all types of pollen and allow random combinations to occur. Instead, God created precise instructions within the flower’s anatomy that prevent wasted energy and ensure orderly reproduction.

• The ovary contains ovules, which become seeds when fertilized. After fertilization, the ovary grows and enlarges into a “fruit” to protect those seeds. From the outside, the ovary looks like a swollen area at the base of the style. A lily ovary is divided into six sections.

If you were to slice the ovary in half crosswise (like cutting a piece of celery) and look at it under a microscope, you would see three chambers and six ovules.

A lily ovary.
Jon Houseman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

God’s Design in the Lily

Did you figure out the pattern? God designed the lily in threes, or multiples of three. This is a signature pattern found in a group of flowering plants called monocots. Flowers with petal arrangements in multiples of four or five belong to a group called dicots.

What’s truly amazing is that the pattern of three in the lily isn’t limited to just the petals, but it shows up all throughout the entire flower. God created each special part of the flower with a specific purpose, and without every part working together, the plants would not be able to reproduce. The next time you look closely at a flower, think about the order, design, and patterns that point to the Creator God.

Footnotes

1. Michael Hassler, “World Plants: Synonymic Checklist and Distribution of the World Flora,” World Plants, last updated March 30, 2026, https://www.worldplants.de/world-plants-complete-list/total-species-count.
2. John Warren, “Why Do We Consume Only a Tiny Fraction of the World’s Edible Plants,” World Economic Forum, January 15, 2016, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2016/01/why-do-we-consume-only-a-tiny-fraction-of-the-world-s-edible-plants/.
3. Jack Wellington, “Petal, Sepal or Tepal,” Wild Way, February 9, 2024, https://www.wildway.info/p/petal-sepal-tepal.
4. AskNature, “Stigmas Ensure Pollination,” Biomimicry Institute, accessed May 13, 2026, https://asknature.org/strategy/stigmas-ensure-pollination/.