Garden Plants - Day Lily

The botanical name for the day lily comes from the Greek, hemera = day and kallos = beauty, because each individual flower's beauty lasts only for a single day. The family of day lilies were named by Linnaeus and the individual species within the family have an unusual distinction - he chose to name them for their colours, which was something he did very rarely. Hence we have the fulva or tawny lily, and the flava or lemon lily.

While we grow them entirely for their beauty, the Chinese and Japanese were much more pragmatic about them. The bulbs were dried or pickled in sale, and cooked as a vegetable. The flower buds of one variety were called gum tsoy or golden vegetable. The leaves were said to be medicinal and both the Chinese and the Romans used them as a mild intoxicant - in fact the Chinese name is hsuan t'sao or plant of forgetfulness.

Through the efforts of hybridises in the United States and England great improvements in the daylilies have taken place during the last half century. Originally the only colours were yellow, orange and fulvous red, while today we have colours ranging from near-whites, pastels, yellows, oranges, pinks, vivid reds, crimson, purple, and nearly true blue. The daylily - once little more than a posh onion, has become a garden spectacle. However, the journey has not been straightforward: due to the invasive nature of many daylilies, especially in the USA where they found conditions much to their liking, they were for several decades relegated to roadside plantings or out of the way locations - thus they earned nicknames such as ditch or even outhouse lilies!

Garden Day lily photograph by Ctd 2005, used under a creative commons attribution licence