I love Daylilies part 1

I have a whole lot of different flowers, foliage plants, trees, shrubs and bushes on our two acres. Daylilies are well represented and I have to admit they are my favorites. There are numerous reasons for this and I think I will spread them out over a couple different entries. So, today I will tell you about just one of them.

One reason a lot of people like Daylilies is because they are relatively easy to breed which gives you brand new kinds that no one else has ever grown before. If you are careful, keep good records and know what you are doing, you can end up with some pretty spectacular flowers. Doing it well requires a degree of meticulousness that is foreign to my nature, so it is unlikely that I will try it anytime soon. I am more than happy to take advantage of other people’s efforts though.

I was looking through some photos from the last couple summers and found pictures of these favorites from a bed of un-named Daylily cultivars. I bought these on eBay, from a breeder who was getting rid of his less desirable plants for 2 bucks apiece. These will never be famous or win any awards, but each summer I get to enjoy their varied and unique blooms.

Despite my ignorance about a lot of this, I do know why some of these were discarded. This tangerine one looks beautiful when it first opens, but just a couple hours under the sun and it fades in blotchy patches. It looks really nice for a short time though.

This little rose one comes out in what is called a bagel form and I imagine that is what the breeder was looking for – too bad only about 1/2 of the flowers ever actually look like this.

I have no idea how this one fell short though. It gets prettier every year. I hope the breeder I bought it from doesn’t find my blog – he would suffer sellers remorse and sneak into my yard some night to steal this little beauty.

Another puzzler. The flowers on this plant are some of the most stunning in any of my flower beds – nearly 8 inches across and it blooms for a full month. Maybe he had one with a deeper color or rounder petals?

I am partial to yellow daylilies, so I love this one, but I know the cup shape isn’t particularly desirable to most people and the blooms don’t really open enough.

This is my favorite. The first two years it didn’t look like much but since then it has been gorgeous with huge blooms and intense color. It will be big enough to divide this coming fall and I will be spreading it around the yard.

So, while you can spend around $500 or more on a single plant, if you are into the really fancy cutting edge varities, one of the things I like the best about daylilies is that they are/can be cheap. Even named varities are usually not very expensive and here’s the best thing: they increase. And increase and increase and increase. You can dig them up and divide them and replant them in another spot and give them to your friends or sell them yourself. In fact, if you don’t dig them up and divide them at least every 5 years or so, they won’t bloom as well and that is a good thing for a lazy person like me because otherwise, I would intend to divide them till the cows come home without ever actually doing it. Taking pictures of daylilies is a lot more fun than dividing them.

We will be talking about daylilies again, of that you can be sure. Because I have a lot of daylilies and that means I have a lot of daylily photos.