Plant Profile: Daylilies

Daylilies are the perfect perennial for the garden as they require very little care, will grow in hot, sunny locations with little water and seem to tolerate most soil conditions.

Daylilies belong to the genus Hemerocallis and they come in many varieties and colours.  The inner part called the throat can be a different colour to the actual leaves.

Daylilies are perennials and the clumps get bigger each year.  Clumps can be divided in the spring before blooming.  The bigger the clump, the more scapes and then more blooms.

Many buds will form on one stem and one bud a day will open and by the following morning it will have faded away.

Daylilies grow in clumps with masses of thin leaves.  Flower stems called scapes grow upwards and at the end there are usually several buds.  These are the Mabel Fuller variety.

This variety is Catherine Woodbury … a gentle peachy pink colour with yellow centres.

I have two large clumps of yellow day lilies, one that blooms in late spring and one that blooms about mid summer. There are also Stella D’oro yellow daylilies that form a bit smaller clump and will give blooms for a long period of time if you cut away the scapes as the blooms finish.

The orange ditch lilies can be found along the roadways.  There are many hybrid varieties of these ones too. There are a few really large clumps in the garden and this year I’ve been digging lots of them to make them more manageable and giving them away to other gardeners.

After blooming the scape will dry out and then I cut them off as close to the base as possible.

Daylilies are different for oriental and asiatic lilies.  Daylily blooms form on scapes or long stems, separate from the leaves, whereas the other lilies have blooms at the top of the stem that has the leaves on it.  Daylily blooms only last one day but lily blooms will last several days.  The best difference is those red lily beetles haven’t attacked the daylilies yet but they are all over the  oriental and asiatic lilies.