diff --git a/spacy/morphology.pyx b/spacy/morphology.pyx
index 3d2281ae6..c69488b6c 100644
--- a/spacy/morphology.pyx
+++ b/spacy/morphology.pyx
@@ -84,11 +84,11 @@ cdef class Morphology:
                 self._cache.set(tag_id, orth, <void*>cached)
 
     def lemmatize(self, const univ_pos_t pos, attr_t orth):
-        if self.lemmatizer is None:
-            return self.strings[orth].lower()
         cdef unicode py_string = self.strings[orth]
+        if self.lemmatizer is None:
+            return self.strings[py_string.lower()]
         if pos != NOUN and pos != VERB and pos != ADJ and pos != PUNCT:
-            return py_string.lower()
+            return self.strings[py_string.lower()]
         cdef set lemma_strings
         cdef unicode lemma_string
         lemma_strings = self.lemmatizer(py_string, pos)