{"id":2141,"date":"2017-06-26T06:27:12","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T14:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2141"},"modified":"2017-06-26T06:27:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T14:27:12","slug":"daylily-daze-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/daylily-daze-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Daylily Daze"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bi-colored<\/a>
Bi-colored varieties “pop” in the garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

July is daylily time, with slender flower buds bursting open joyfully just as the last of the petals have fallen from the roses and the oak leaf hydrangeas have reached their peak.\u00a0 Though each bloom lasts only one day, the plants are among the toughest around, as well as the most popular.\u00a0 The common, tawny orange type, Hemerocallis fulva, sometimes maligned with the nickname \u201cditch lily\u201d, thrive wherever they find even a slightly congenial situation.\u00a0 Native to China and Japan and resident in the United States since the late nineteenth century, they have succeeded so well that many people think they are native wildflowers.<\/p>\n

But success has a price and the price paid by those \u201cditch lilies\u201d, which also turn up in gardens, railroad rights-of-way and vacant lots, is that they are considered dangerously invasive in much of the northeast and selected other places across the country.\u00a0 I know all the perils of invasive plants and happily choose natives when I have the chance, but there is still something magical about a steep and otherwise forlorn embankment carpeted with orange blooms.<\/p>\n

True lilies belong to the Lilium genus and the Liliaceae family.\u00a0 Daylilies, though they share trumpet-like \u201clily\u201d blooms, belong to the genus Hemerocallis in the Hemerocallidaceae family.\u00a0 They are most closely related to the amaryllis or Amaryllidaceae plant family and if you examine an amaryllis you can see the similarity in bloom and foliage configuration.<\/p>\n

In terms of sheer numbers of cultivated varieties, I think that daylilies probably lead the ornamental plant pack.\u00a0 They are wildly popular, with thousands of registered varieties that bloom in just about every color except true blue.\u00a0 The majority fall into the orange-yellow-peach color range, a situation that led the great garden writer Cassandra Danz to quip, \u201cAll daylilies look orange from three feet away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The common tawny orange daylily can be uncommonly lovely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every year breeders introduce new daylilies, which supersede older varieties in the marketplace.\u00a0 Sometimes the newcomers are virtually indistinguishable from their predecessors.<\/p>\n

No matter how much space you have in beds, containers or sunny window boxes, there is a daylily that will fit.\u00a0 Dwarf types grow less than 12 inches tall, while more gangly varieties top out at three to four feet.\u00a0 The flowers that bloom atop those stalks–or scapes in daylily lingo\u2014may be miniature, at less than three inches wide, or more than twice that size.\u00a0 A dwarf variety may have large flowers.\u00a0 The opposite is also true.<\/p>\n

Regardless of flower size, daylily blooms bear six single petals that can be wide, narrow, edged in \u201cruffles\u201d or slightly recurved or curled away from the flower\u2019s center.\u00a0 Double-flowered types feature two or more rows of petals, with flowers that sometimes look more like cupcakes than trumpets.\u00a0 This wide variety of flower profiles and plant sizes means that daylilies can fit into almost any landscape scheme, from starkly modern to crammed cottage beds.\u00a0 All they require is plenty of sun and a reasonable amount of water.\u00a0 Well established plants can even withstand some drought.<\/p>\n

So how do you choose the right daylily?\u00a0 Local nurseries and garden centers carry relatively few varieties each year, but if you flip through a few catalogs or websites, you can compare colors, bloom types, bloom times and sizes.\u00a0 Old-fashioned daylilies\u2014bred before the last decade of the twentieth century\u2014generally bloom only once per season outside the Deep South.\u00a0 That said, a mature plant may produce scores of buds that open sequentially over a period of a week or ten days.\u00a0 If you select a mixture of early, middle and late season varieties, you can easily enjoy daylily bloom for two months or more.\u00a0 Good vendors supply the \u201cearly, middle or late\u201d information on plant tags or in catalog\/online descriptions.<\/p>\n

Beginning with the first reliable reblooming daylily, the miniature \u2018Stella de Oro\u2019, registered in 1985, breeders have produced more and more varieties that will reflower reliably twice or sometimes even three times per growing season.\u00a0 Many of these sport smaller flowers, but they compensate with abundant production and, in most cases, dependability.<\/p>\n

An array of daylilies inhabit my premises and the collection includes at least one heirloom variety, some romantic doubles, interesting bi-colors and a many different flower and plant sizes.\u00a0 I don\u2019t divide any of them as often as I should, but if I did, I would have enough plants to fill another garden.\u00a0 My yard is even home to a stand of tawny orange ditch lilies that refuse to do anything except reproduce and bloom.\u00a0 I grub out the overflow from time to time and deadhead to prevent self-seeding.\u00a0 The clumps increase in size no matter what I do.<\/p>\n

My favorite of all the daylilies is the old-fashioned \u201clemon lily\u201d or Hemerocallis flava.\u00a0 Sometimes also known to its botanist friends as Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus, it a tall, once-bloomer that waits until the middle to end of the daylily season to produce flowers.\u00a0 The magic of the yellow blooms is not their cheerful appearance, but their sweet, lemony scent.\u00a0 I have mine by a walkway, so I can smell the fragrance as I pass.<\/p>\n

Daylily vendors abound online, but if you have a yen for some of the best plants, try Oakes Daylilies, P.O. Box 268, Corryton, TN 37721; (800) 532-9545; www.oakesdaylilies.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Free print catalog.<\/p>\n

\"'Hyperion'<\/a>
‘Hyperion’ breathes the scent of lemon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July is daylily time, with slender flower buds bursting open joyfully just as the last of the petals have fallen from the roses and the oak leaf hydrangeas have reached their peak.\u00a0 Though each bloom lasts only one day, the plants are among the toughest around, as well as the most popular.\u00a0 The common, tawny … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[46,896,47,1657,737,1656],"class_list":["post-2141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-daylilies","tag-daylily","tag-hemerocallis","tag-orange-flowers","tag-perennials","tag-summer-blooming-flowers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2144,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions\/2144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}