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Anyone passing my house around the end of June may come to the conclusion I have a thing for daylilies. Right along side the driveway is a relatively large stretch of sloping garden space, 70 feet long by 10 wide, full to capacity with daylilies. Some may call it an obsession until they see this in bloom. No obsession looks so good. I often wonder what their reaction would be if they checked out the rest of my four acres and spotted my other daylily patches, some even bigger than the one out front. Nuts, coo-coo, insane? Most probably. Ain’t stopping me though. Daylilies are a gardener’s best friend.
Not that I feel the need to justify my “Obsession” but I had a very good reason for them taking up so much space. It was a horrible, sloping piece of wasteland mostly rock and what the builders called “berm dirt”. Truly it was awful stuff and to make matters worse there was the torrent of water that gushed down this embankment during rainstorms which eroded what little soil there was and left a hideous mess at the bottom. I figured the only thing I could get to grow on this miniature “Badlands” would be weeds. Not my idea of traffic stopping landscaping, to be sure.
I needed something tough. I had to use the daylily for the task at hand. They fit all the requirements plus they were darn cheap from a mail-order catalogue. Need I tell you all that makes the Daylily the gardener’s best friend? I think I better.
Hemerocallis fulva, the common orange daylily, is a tough and rugged perennial mostly found growing wild and unencumbered on rocky roadsides, down lonely country lanes, along streams, inter-planted among wild flowers and grave markers in cemeteries and covering steep banks by the highway. There’s hardly a plant out there that’s tougher except perhaps the dandelion. Unlike the dandelion, daylilies are a welcome “weed”.
They can top out at six feet tall, are not fussy about soil nor the water available. They tolerate extremes on both sides, the coldest winters and the hottest summers. They take severe droughts without a complaint and can stand quite comfortable in standing and running water. The secret to their hardiness is their fleshy, tuberous root system. These take hold never to let go making them essential where soil erosion is a problem. Plenty of people dig these plants from the wild and marvel that they always grow back. They just didn’t remove all of the roots and the perpetual daylily dutifully grows back, just like the dandelion.
In some parts of north eastern United States these roots are considered a delicacy, boiled and eaten somewhat like the potato. You’ll have to ask Martha Stewart for the recipe since she’s the one from whom I heard that. I’d just as soon leave them to spread as they are apt to do to give me more pleasure at the sight of them in bloom than eaten.
My favorite cultivar of the Hemerocallis fulva is double flowering “Kwanso”. What a beauty! But there are so many other of the hybrid variety in a huge array of colors, sizes, types and all with distinct blooming times and some even bloom repeatedly. Needless to say there is a daylily out there with your name on it or that you will fall in love with.
There are evergreen, deciduous and semi-evergreen daylilies. They can be a tiny one foot high plant or tower over the garden at six feet tall. Flowers can be 3 inches across or up to 8 inches wide. They can have wide petals, thin, spidery petals, smooth edged or ruffled. They can be solid colors from stark white to almost black, yellow, red, orange, pink, green, blue, purple and every shade in-between. Tons come in bi and tri colors with stripes and intricate veining. They come in single flower form, semi-double and double. Some even have a fragrance to rival any fussy rose. With all those choices you can bet you will find something to entice you into starting your own daylily collection.
At last count, and the count increases annually, there are 20, 000 named Hybrid varieties registered with the Daylily foundation known as The American Hemerocallis Society. Will I ever reach my goal of acquiring one of each? Well, I’m certainly trying. Just last spring I planted another sloping area created when my husband built a pole barn for his expanding business. I think it was another 6-7 hundred plants on that hill.
Yes, it was a bit of work but work that I never have to do again. That’s the other good thing about daylilies. Once planted and mulched with some shredded bark mulch, leaf mold or wood chips there is barely a thing to do for them. They take care of themselves after that. Rain from the sky keeps them happy, sunshine keeps them growing and blooming and they self-mulch every autumn when their long, sword-like leaves lay down in a nice, virtually weed-proof mat. The new growth in spring comes poking out from among the old leaves without a care. What could be easier?
The most popular and widely available daylily is the tiny dwarf with the long blooming time “Stella de Oro” which won the highest honor bestowed on daylilies, the Stout Metal. Other favorites include the pretty yellow “Mary Todd” and the highly fragrant and large flowering “Hyperion”. Of course I haven’t said anything about “Joan Senior”, “Barbara Mitchell”, “Bright Sunset”, “Prairie Blue Eyes”, “Fairy Tale Pink”, “Happy Returns”, “Janice Brown” and “Strawberry Candy” all of which currently reside among so many others in my many flower beds.
I can’t say enough good things about the faithful, wonderful, lovely, enchanting daylily. I think you should do yourself a favor and get one or two or twenty-eight if you’ve the room in a flower bed. You may like them. Many do, almost as much as I do.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 For more garden talk, funny short stories and romantic novel excerpts visit http://www.helium.com/users/32782
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