Bermuda faces an Easter lily shortage — because the traditional springtime flower is blooming too early.

Easter this year falls on Sunday, April 20, but the traditional white-and-yellow Easter flower is bursting into bloom several weeks early.

Second-generation farmer Carlos Amaral, whose family has tilled the soil in Bermuda for more than 50 years, blamed a late arrival of $70,000 worth of bulbs from the US and an unusually warm winter for the problem.

Mr Amaral, who farms in Devonshire, said: “A warm winter causes the bloom to come on faster and with this particular crop there was a planting delay as well.

”It was a double whammy — mild conditions which are unusual for this time of year and a delay in getting the bulbs planted because there was a delay in getting them into Bermuda.”

Mr Amaral explained that strict Bermuda Department of Agriculture and Fisheries regulations meant that bulbs, imported to the Island from the west coast of the United States, had to undergo extra checks on the bulbs themselves and the soil they grew in.

He added: “The US have a standard for testing and Bermuda’s tests are above and beyond that, so it takes more time.”

Mr Amaral said that while the bulbs were waiting to pass checks, they had been held in cold storage. “As soon as they were planted in ideal growing conditions, they took off.”

He added that many of the lilies from his 7,500 bulb planting were already 70 percent in bloom. Mr Amaral said: “It’s nature at its best — unpredictable and unyielding.

“The saving grace is that they are multi-bloom stalks, so there will be more than one bloom on there.”

But he said: “The later it gets, there will be fewer blooms on the stalks and over time the quality will not be there.

“Basically, the volume that would usually be available will be significantly reduced because the quality will not be there. They will be available, but not in the quantity and quality we would normally have.

“I’m hedging my bets with a late crop of bulbs because they were already on the Island, but the number that would potentially be there won’t be there at all.

“Crisis might not be the best choice of words but there is potentially going to be a shortage because the crops have peaked earlier than expected.”

But he added the shortage was unlikely to push prices up.

He said: “Prices tend to be fairly stagnant — there’s not much fluctuation. Supply and demand normally dictates price, but we try to keep an even keel. It’s a quintessential part of Easter, so we try to keep the prices stable.”

Julie Greaves, general manager of Aberfeldy Nurseries, which imports thousands of bulbs for supply to farmers and gardeners across the island, backed Mr Amaral.

She said: “If cut flowers have bloomed already, there will be a shortage.”

Ms Greaves said, however, that Aberfeldy grows its hundreds of blooms in pots, which allowed room to “tweak” growth rates.

“We had ours in cold storage for a while and basically sent them to sleep. We did that for several weeks, then brought them back out.

“The pots will still be lovely, but perhaps we won’t get the height on them we usually get.

“Hopefully, we’ll still sell them — it just takes a lot more time and effort to tweak them, but we’re used to it.”