Pronounciation: Hem-er-o-CAL-lis SPEE-shes

Hardiness zones:
Sunset All (depending on use)
USDA All (depending on use)

Landscape Use: Strong floral accent, perennial garden border, edging, oasis or mesic design motifs, and habitat gardens - flowers attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

Form & Character: Clumping and upright, erect, elegant, colorful, surprisingly tough.

Growth Habit: Deciduous (winter cold or summer drought) to evergreen (in milder climates including Phoenix), herbaceous perennial bulb, moderate clumping growth habit by short rhizomes or stolons to 30-inches tall (flower stalks to 2- to 4-feet tall). Daylilies have a fibrous or fibrous-tuberous root system with contractile tuberous roots that store nutrients and water.

Foliage/Texture: Elongated, medium green, linear-lanceolate, strap-shaped, semi-succulent leaves to 24- to 30-inches long and 2-inches wide, occassionally convex or cupped; medium texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Large, showy irregular-shaped flowers produced on scapes, either solitary or in helicoid cymes, mostly warm colors ranging from white, yellow, orange to red. Flowers have six stamens joined to the perianth tube, each with a two-lobed anther. The unequal stamen filaments are curved upward, the linear-oblong anthers dorsifixed; fruits are a capsule containing black seeds, though most hybrid selections are sterile.

Seasonal Color: Colorful floral display primarily during the spring in Phoenix or during summer in Arizona gardens at higher elevations such as in Williams or Flagstaff.

Temperature: Cold hardy to 25^oF, heat intolerant above 115^oF, especially in full sun.

Light: Full sun to filtered shade from the western summer sun. Full shade negatively effects flowering.

Soil: Tolerant

Watering: Regular supplemental irrigation is needed especially during the summer.

Pruning: Divide and thin crowded clumps about every 3 to 5 years to reinvigorate.

Propagation: Extremely easy by division. Daylily breeders propagate by seed to discover new variations in flower color.

Disease and Pests: None in Phoenix (only abiotic stressors); however, the dreaded garden snail in coastal California landscapes can decimate daylily foliage.

Additional comments: Daylilies are a wonderful, generally carefree, and resilient perennial for garden enthusiasts and real horticulturists to grow and admire in mesic and oasis garden borders in Phoenix. There are SO many cultivated hybrid selections to choose from with new selections being released each year. A word of caution though, daylilies will not thrive in Phoenix in xeric or desert landscape settings where its just too hot and dry.

Taxonomic tidbit: The genus name Hemerocallis is derived from two Greek words, 'hemeros' (translated ‘day’) and 'kallos' (translated ‘beauty’) meaning 'beauty for a day' referring to the flowers that only last one day.

Biomedicinal and ethnobotanical lore: Daylilies are plants of historical significance for their biomedicinal and culinary uses.

For daylily affectionados: Check out the American Daylily Society.