It’s all in the GENES

Today there are over 80,000 registered daylily (Hemeorcallis) hybrids, arguably America’s top favourite perennial plant. They are categorised into groups of large blooms, doubles, patterned, spider and UFO shapes, and miniature too. They come in every colour except blue!

Daylilies started off as simple diploids, this older style of Daylily had limited colour palette, smaller flowers with narrow petals, limited ruffling and lower bud count with flowers held on tall thin scapes.

Plant scientists then found a way to introduce an extra set of genes to the chromosomes of each cell. These tetraploids have an increased cell size due to this and have a higher ratio of cell contents to the cell wall. In doing so the modern Daylily was born!

Daylilies now have flowers of thick substance that hold up to various weather conditions. They have a high bud count 20-30 per scape, they are larger (some spanning 18cm), they have thicker substance and sculpture, and are re-bloomers too.

The overall sentiment from plant lovers and non-plant lovers is WOW! They are amazing, stunning, how did they do that? This obsession for their beauty can be found in the name hybridizers give their new introductions such as: Answering angels, chorus of angels, celebration of angels, calling all angels, in search of angels, heavens glory, how beautiful heaven must be, lord of lightning, pathway to paradise, sweet love of heaven, the wonder of it all.