Daylilies: The nearly perfect perennial
No perennial plants are easier to grow or more rewarding than daylilies.
Frans Hals daylily features lemon- and cinnamon-colored petals. A long-time favorite dating to the early 1950s, its flowers are 5 inches wide.
Courtesy of Karan Davis Cutler
After having fun with the some of the wacky names people give daylilies 鈥� see my 鈥�Daylilies Are Wonderful Flowers, But, Oh, Their Names,鈥� 鈥� I confess that I am a card-carrying member of the Daylily Admiration Society.
Here in Vermont 鈥� and nearly everywhere else in North America 鈥� there is no perennial that is so easy and rewarding to grow.
Daylilies have many assets
Assets? Daylilies are tolerant and undemanding. They are immune to nearly all pests and diseases. They like sun, fertile soil that drains well, and adequate moisture, but can thrive in much less than ideal conditions. Good neighbors in the garden, they spread easily but not aggressively, and are easy to divide.
More assets? Breeders, beginning in the 1930s with the patron saint of daylilies, Dr. A.B. Stout, have kept busy creating new flower colors, forms, and sizes, as well as better heat- and cold-tolerance.
By in plant cells, hybridizers are giving us sturdier and more vigorous plants with more flowers with more intense colors. With close to 70,000 named cultivars, there are more than enough to choose from unless you鈥檙e gardening on a colossal scale.
The daylily鈥檚 genus name 鈥� Hemerocallis, which means 鈥渂eauty for a day鈥� in Greek 鈥� warns of one liability of this perennial: Each blossom lasts only one day.
Flower scapes, or stems, however, are loaded with buds, so plants normally bloom for a month -- some longer -- and there are extra early, early, mid- and late-blooming cultivars, when means the daylily season can last three months and longer.
To compensate for that one-day characteristic, breeders have created a truckload of reblooming daylilies, cultivars that flower, take a quick breather, and flower again, albeit less generously the second or third time.
They鈥檙e also known as everblooming, repeat flowering, recurrrent blooming, continuous blooming, and, wrongly, extended daylilies.
Extended daylilies, such as 鈥楽trawberry Candy鈥� [see second photo above; click on arrow at right base of first photo], are cultivars that remain open more than one day, at least 16 hours.
There also are nocturnal daylilies, cultivars that open in the afternoon and close in the morning. 鈥極lallie Sandra鈥�, 鈥楤lack-Eyed Stella鈥�, and 鈥榃hite Temptation鈥� are three, making them ideal for moonlight gardeners.
Historically, another mark against daylilies as a group is that they had no fragrance. But savvy breeders also have been at work on this flaw, and now there are a sizable number of fragrant cultivars, including 鈥楶retty in Pink鈥�, 鈥楤etty Davis Eyes鈥�, which is also an extended bloomer, and 鈥楤onanza鈥�.
Be warned, though, that old-time favorites like 鈥�Frans Hals鈥� [see first photo above] do not smell as good as they look.
Last, there are no pure blue or pure white daylilies. But there are gorgeous reds, purples, pinks, oranges, yellows, golds, creams, and pastels, as well as bicolors galore. Only the most picky colorist 鈥� which I am not 鈥� would complain.
Good time to plant new daylilies
Why write about daylilies just as most have stopped flowering? As long as they have time to establish their roots before the ground freezes, daylilies are happy to be planted in late summer and fall. And this is the time that plants at local nurseries 鈥� and at some nursery websites 鈥� go on sale.
You鈥檒l have to travel to a local daylily specialist or go online to find more that the 鈥渦sual suspects鈥� such as Stella De Oro (often sold as Stella d鈥橭ro), which almost everyone agrees is overplanted.
There are scores of daylily nurseries throughout the country, from to in Wisconsin to in Massachusetts to in Georgia and in Florida.
The on The American Hemerocallis Society website is a good place to begin looking for a daylily source near you, or use Google and enter 鈥渄aylily鈥� and your state.
I鈥檓 fortunate to have great sources in Vermont, including and , where they not only grow close to 3,000 different cultivars but also breed daylilies..
Specialist daylily nurseries are the best source of reliable information as well as large, healthy bare-root plants. (Word to the wise: You don鈥檛 need to buy potted plants!)
If your budget is limited, take a look at the at the website of that old faithful of peonies, daylilies, and hostas, . A Missouri nursery begun in 1885, Wild doesn鈥檛 offer all the newest names but has great prices for several hundred first-rate daylilies. For example, 鈥楬appy Returns鈥�, a canary yellow offspring of 鈥楽tella d鈥橭ro鈥�, is $2; it鈥檚 $9 or more at most of the specialist nurseries. 鈥�Chicago Apache鈥� is $2.50 at Wild鈥檚, $15 at a daylily specialist. Wild鈥檚 has a sale going on right now.
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Karan Davis Cutler blogs regularly at Diggin鈥� It. To read more, click here. She's a former magazine editor and newspaper columnist and the author of scores of garden articles and more than a dozen books, including 鈥淏urpee - The Complete Flower Gardener鈥� and 鈥淗erb Gardening for Dummies.鈥� Karan now struggles to garden in the unyieldingly dense clay of Addison County, Vt., on the shore of Lake Champlain, where she is working on a book about gardening to attract birds and other wildlife.