I didn’t always love Daylilies. They weren’t my first choice for my perennial garden. I started with a love of all plants pink, white and blue. I eschewed the common Daylily.

First of all, I didn’t like the colour orange, but then in those days I didn’t like Hostas either. As I planted my enormous garden though, I appreciated the price tag of common Daylilies. Free! I dug a few from my local ditch, and planted them along the border of our property. Being called Lillie, I got hooked on my Daylily collection, and it grew from there.
I know that in the title of this blog, I have deliberately misspelled Daylily as Daylillie, and also as Everydaylillie in my other blog. It’s just my name in a pun! (I think the Lilies in my blog header are likely Asiatic).

Daylily or Hemerocallis?

The Daylily or Day Lily is not really a Lily – it is a Hemerocallis. True Lilies are Lilium, and the Asiatic Lilies that we can plant from bulbs, have a very similar looking flower.
The Daylily is a perennial, whose flowers bloom generally daily. The flower typically blooms in the morning, closes and withers at night, and can be followed the next day by another bloom on the same plant. My husband, who wakes up early to water my garden enjoys watching the plants bloom in the morning.

Daylilies have fibrous roots (unlike Lilies which have bulbs), and long straight leaves.

Hemerocallis Fulva or Tiger Lily

The Orange Daylily commonly found across North America is Hemerocallis Fulva. My mother noted that they always bloomed just in time for her July birthday, and we called them Tiger Lilies, but they are also called Tawny, Fourth of July and Corn Lilies.

I had thought they were native North American plants, but in fact they are native to Asia from the Causcasia, China, Japan, Korea and the Himalayas. Daylilies have been cultivated from the Hemerocallis Fulva and the yellow Daylily Hemerocallis Flava into more than 80,000 cultivars.
The Fulva, though is an invasive species, and is quite hardy in ditches and roadsides as well as in my garden.

They are nearly impossible to kill in my garden, and when I dig up a clump and drop them somewhere else – they tend to grow where I drop them. I will bring them to my new rocky island garden where I have very little soil and cooler weather. I know they will do well there.

My neighbours stop by the garden and ask what to do with the plants in the fall when the flowers are done and the foliage is fading. To be honest, if I like the foliage, I just leave it. If I want to tidy the area – I whippersnip the whole area and compost the leaves. If the plants were precious and sensitive specimens I wouldn’t do that, but they aren’t – so I whippersnip away!