Hemerocallis fulva Seeds | Tawny Daylily
LATIN NAME: Hemerocallis fulva
COMMON NAME: Tawny Daylily
Plant Profile
The tawny daylily is a robust, clump-forming perennial with fleshy, tuberous roots and arching straps of leaves up to a metre long. In midsummer it sends up stems a metre or more tall, each carrying a succession of large, trumpet-shaped flowers in a tawny orange, with a darker eye and a paler midrib.
Each flower opens for a single day and is replaced by the next, and a well-established clump stays in bloom for a month. It spreads steadily by rhizomes and forms a dense mass, and in parts of North America it has escaped into roadsides and old gardens, where it is known as the ditch lily. It is native to China, Korea and Japan, and it has been cultivated for at least two thousand years.
Science & Biotechnology
The cultivated tawny daylily is a triploid, with three sets of chromosomes, and it is self-sterile: it sets almost no seed and spreads entirely by its rhizomes. That is why the plant in a garden or a roadside ditch is usually a single clone, moved by people rather than by seed, and why the species in the wild has a narrower flower form than the garden plant.
The genus is placed in Asphodelaceae, and its taxonomy is complicated by a long history of hybridisation in cultivation, with more than eighty thousand named cultivars. The flowers open for a day because the petals senesce on a fixed schedule, and the plant reabsorbs the nutrients from the fading flower, a form of recycling that lets it flower for weeks on poor soil.
Uses & Benefits
The tawny daylily is used as a tough ground cover on banks, at the edge of a pond and in places where little else will grow, and it is one of the few perennials that will hold a slope against erosion. The flower buds are eaten in China and Japan, where they are dried and sold as golden needles, though the commercial product comes mainly from Hemerocallis citrina.
The roots are used in Chinese medicine, and the flowers yield a dye. Two cautions apply. The plant is toxic to cats, causing kidney failure even in small amounts, and eating large quantities of the raw buds or roots can cause digestive upset and, in some cases, neurological symptoms. Cooked in the traditional way, in small quantities, it is a recognised vegetable, and the dried buds are sold in Chinese groceries as a soup ingredient.
Growing from Seed
The tawny daylily sets little or no seed in cultivation because it is triploid, so seed is only obtainable from wild or diploid stock, and even then germination is erratic. Sow fresh seed in autumn in a moist compost at 15-20 °C; if no germination occurs within two months, give six weeks of cold and return to warmth. The seedlings grow slowly at first.
In practice the plant is propagated by dividing the clumps in early spring or late summer, which is quick and reliable. Plant the divisions with the crown just below the surface, in any soil, in sun or part shade, and water them in. Once established the plant needs nothing: it tolerates drought, neglect and competition, and the only task is to lift and divide the clumps every five or six years when they become crowded and flower less.
Our Take
The toughest perennial in the garden, with a month of bloom and no demands. Divide it every few years and it will outlive you.
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