Gardening Topic for August 2006
Searching for the Right Daylily

Provided by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org.

How drab and bare would our gardens be in July and August were it not for phlox and daylilies. True, some annuals do carry us through, but these are our main perennial retainers.

Finding the right daylily (Hemerocallis) for your own garden can be an exciting quest and become a life-long passion or an experience far less wonderful.  With Hemerocallis, each flower is only beautiful for a single day, but many varieties give weeks or a month of color when needed most.

There are no truly blue daylilies yet, and perhaps there will never be any.  Breeders, however, are having great fun and frustration trying to achieve this color.  Along the way they have bred plants of just about any other color.  Cultivars of white, ivory, yellow, gold, apricot, peach and pure orange are well represented.  Others sport flowers of scarlet, rose, pink, crimson, lilac, lavender, and royal purple.  I own a few others which are all definitely headed over to the dark side.  'Africa' is a sooty black-red with a heart of gold and probably one of the most aptly named varieties.  It holds its color well for one so deeply colored, but still appreciates afternoon light shade.  Almost all deep colors are retained better with some afternoon shading.  If your plant is to remain in full sun, look for the scarlet reds over the rosier tones and other varieties with golden throats which are more colorfast.

Alas, all daylily colors tend to bleach out a bit on hot days, but heat also brings out the best of the pinks and blends.  If you are not ready or able to do a daily dead-heading (removing the spent flower heads of yesterday) do not rush out and buy all large flowered plants.  Remember that today's blossom is tomorrow's wet laundry hanging off the scape.  Instead invest in small-flowered or miniature flowering plants.  (Miniature refers to the flower size in Hemerocallis, not the height of the scape at flowering time; if you wish a shorter daylily, look for the word 'dwarf' in its description).

If all the buds on your bloomscape are about the same size, you can look forward to lots of color for about a week to ten days.  Small, medium, and large buds on the same scape are evidence of a much longer bloom period with perhaps fewer individual flowers open each day.  On a mature clump there should be quite enough flower power from this second type to please anyone.

Consider dwarf plants versus tall ones: each has its place.  If you are lining a path or viewing a garden from the deck, you may wish to use dwarf varieties so they will not usurp walking space.  You will look straight down on them so you can easily inspect their pretty faces.  Gardens viewed from afar should opt for at least some taller flowering varieties or you may never see them at all.  Cultivars with different colored eye-zones or halos might also be better used and viewed up close.  Solid colors give greater impact over longer distances.  Miniature flowers on tall stems - 30 inches or more - float above the summer garden like delicate butterflies and are forgiving if you have not been able to dead-head due to time or weather constraints.  Plants with scapes that feature three or more short branches from the main stem will display flowers more elegantly, and if you fail to dead-head them will allow new flowers to open fully despite their "melted" mates.

The terms "Tetraploid" and "Diploid" refer to the number of chromosomes that a plant has.  Generally, this will only matter if you wish to breed Hemerocallis.  "Tets" have twice as many chromosomes as "Dips".  This means a breeder has a greater number of possible gene combinations when crossing two "Tets" than when breeding two "Dips".  More combinations gives a greater chance for change.  Mostly we accept that "Tets" are a kind of Texas-type plant with bigger, brighter, sturdier everything.  Generally this shows "Tets" with larger and deeper colored flowers held on heavier stems above lots of foliage.

Today's "Dips" can rival the "Tets" as folks have been breeding them for better stems and foliage.  In my opinion the sweetest and softest colored daylilies are Diploids.

Hemerocallis are denoted as evergreen, semi-evergreen, or dormant.  Evergreen types want to hold onto their foliage all year.  Of course, in New England this is not possible.  They will be frosted and just look miserable.  Semi-evergreens will perhaps resist the first few frosts but will go to sleep when continued cold weather sets in.  Dormants are the most hardy and will die back to the ground with severe frost and hibernate until spring.  Semis and dormants are best in New England.  Dormants will also resist somewhat a newer disease known as rust.  Rust in the nastiest cases will rub off on your hands just like you were handling an old iron pipe.  If you find one of your varieties to be very susceptible to rust, it should be removed from your garden, roots and all, and be disposed of.  Do not add diseased materials to your compost pile.

I would not invest in "evergreen" types for the Northeast.  The foliage often looks sad, for they may start to grow upon getting the first warm days and then become Spring-frosted and mushy.  The mush can be removed by hand but the battered looking leaves will be with you all summer.  Indeed, older cultivars of "evergreen" could be killed by our New England winters.

Lastly, a word about reblooming cultivars whose line really started with the smaller flowered 'Stella d'Oro'.  They are now available in different colors than the original soft gold.  They do not have as many buds per scape or the nice branching, but are still garden-worthy.  As the breeders work at producing more rebloomers, plants will get better and better.  Many varieties today are listed as being reblooming.  However, if they do not begin to flower in early or early-mid season bloom periods, they are unlikely to rebloom here in Massachusetts.  The later starting ones will rebloom only in the Carolinas, Georgia, or Florida - not here!  If you do not supply additional water if Nature does not, or perhaps a swig of liquid fertilizer, do not expect your rebloomers performance to be good.

Now go out there and round up some mid and late summer color for your gardens.  But do remember to look past the pretty faces, because you have to live with the whole plant.  Fortunately, with daylilies, the pretty faces are often supported by strong constitutions.

For more information go to American Hemerocallis Society - Daylilies
For other articles, check out our archives

Provided by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org