Shopping for Daylilies

Shopping for daylilies in early May or late July can get you some deals (more so in July than May), but as usual it's buyer beware out there. Except for miniature daylilies, with their smaller foliage, most daylily foliage looks the same. When buying out of blooming season, you are relying on photo tags or description labels for identification. Here's where it gets tricky. Watch out for these problems:

1. Mislabelled pots - This can happen at artisan-style plant outlets that get their stock from offbeat sources. I'm still trying to figure out the true identity of what I'm calling Canning's Mystery, which I bought as a Lavender Rainbow.


2. Old ID tags - I've been caught out by this one, buying what I thought was a cream daylily, only to discover it was actually a faded photo of a bright yellow one.


3. Wrong image on ID tags - Druid's Chant is a lovely lavender daylily with dark purple eyezone. But the flower on the tag photo was yellow. (This is one of those mistakes that actually worked out for the better.)


4. Homemade photo tags - Again, this can happen at artisan-style outlets. Check out the difference between the published photo and the actual flower for a plant that I bought in May this year.

The daylily I thought I bought (Russian Rhapsody) is shown in the first picture. The one that actually bloomed is shown in the second. Still a pretty daylily, but not what I thought I was getting.