Daylily hybrids

Family

Hemerocallidaceae

Habit

perennial

Height

0.8 m

Spread

1.5 m

Growth

medium

Lifespan

15 years

First yield

after 1 year

Hardiness

zone 3–9

Shade tolerance

light shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam, Clay

Soil moisture

dry – moist

pH

6 – 7.5

Edible: The daylily is one of the few ornamental perennials that also yields proper vegetables — in China and Japan it has been grown for exactly that for centuries. Harvest comes in two stages: in spring the young, still-furled shoots, which taste like a tender leek raw or lightly cooked, and from early summer onwards, over weeks, the flower buds. The buds are steamed, fried or dried and, under the name golden needles, are a fixture of Chinese cooking; open flowers add colour to salads and can be stuffed. The thickened storage roots are edible cooked and taste nutty. The cultivar question matters: tolerance varies considerably between hybrids, and some people react to larger amounts with stomach upset. With an unknown cultivar it is worth starting with a small portion.

Other uses: Beyond flower and kitchen the daylily is a tool for difficult places. Its dense clumps and strong roots hold banks and slope edges, suppress weeds lastingly and cope where mowing is impractical — beside ditches, under shrub margins, along driveways. Once established, the planting needs nothing for years but clearing away the old foliage. As a cut flower it is of limited use, since each bloom collapses after a day; a stem carrying several buds does open a new one every morning. The dried leaves can be worked into bands and plaited goods, a secondary use widespread in East Asia.

An undemanding perennial for sunny to partly shaded positions; in partial shade it does grow, but flowers more sparsely. The fleshy storage roots lay down water and nutrients and carry the plant through dry spells, which is why established stands survive prolonged heat as well. Moist to moderately dry conditions are ideal, waterlogging does harm. How strongly a cultivar spreads depends on its parentage — hybrids with a share of Hemerocallis fulva push out noticeably across the ground on short rhizomes, while others stay put as a clump. After about ten years flowering declines, and it is then divided and moved.

Propagation is by dividing the fleshy root clumps in spring or after flowering; the thickened storage roots are often wrongly called rhizomes in the process. With hybrids, plants grown from seed do not come true to cultivar, which is why division is the usual route.

The daylily is strong in design terms and weak in ecological ones — worth knowing before covering large areas with it. It is a neophyte without a Central European associated fauna: no reliable figures exist for wild bee, butterfly or beetle species on daylilies, and both nectar and pollen are rated low. The flower form adds to this: each bloom stands open for a single day, and double cultivars block access to nectar and stamens entirely. It is used all the same — bumblebees and hoverflies visit the simple, single cultivars regularly, and the July to August flowering falls when much of the perennial border is over. Its real contribution is structural: the dense clump, closed all year, gives ground cover to carabid beetles, spiders and amphibians. To favour insects, choose single cultivars and put native perennials alongside.

Special characteristics: each flower opens for one day only the plant keeps sending up more for weeks unusually long harvest period; two-stage harvest: young shoots in spring, then buds over weeks; thickened storage roots markedly drought-tolerant; hybrids differ widely in digestibility test each cultivar separately;

East Asia as the origin of the parent species, today worldwide in gardens. Garden daylilies are crosses of a few wild species from China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and eastern Siberia — above all the orange daylily and the lemon daylily. Both reached Europe as early as the sixteenth century, but serious breeding began only around 1900 in North America; more than ninety thousand cultivars are registered today. As hybrids they have no natural range. The orange daylily has escaped from gardens across Central Europe and much of North America and persists on banks, railway embankments and old farmsteads for decades; in parts of the United States it is accordingly classed as invasive.

As bred hybrids, garden daylilies have no natural site of their own, but their needs follow from the parent species. Those come from woodland margins, riverbanks, damp meadows and mountain grassland in East Asia — sites with deep, fertile soil, good spring moisture and full sun to light shade. The hybrids are correspondingly undemanding: they grow on almost any soil, flower most freely in sun, tolerate part shade and, thanks to their thickened storage roots, longer dry spells as well. Where they escape they hold banks and waste ground, forming dense, competitive clumps over the years.