Friday, June 19, 2009

Daylily garden



I knew, in a theoretical kind of way, that there were a lot of varieties of Daylilies. It didn't really prevent my non-stop gaping at a Daylily garden, though.



One of our wildflower group couples gave us a tour of their garden this week.



Their main focus is Daylilies -- they have hundreds of them.



I doubt I'll ever be as dedicated a gardener.



But I'm lucky to have friends who are.



All the types were labeled, but non-dedicated non-gardener that I am, I didn't take down any names.



If you're dying to know about any particular one, I can probably find out.

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Daylilies are Hemerocallis sp. The name in Greek is a combination of Hemera (day) and Kallos (beautiful).

I wrote about words using Kallos before, when talking about Beautyberry. Every time I come across it in a botanical name, I still crack up, remembering that comment about a track team and their cry of "Callipygious!"

13 comments:

Latane Barton said...

Daylillies are so beautiful. I know you must have enjoyed that journey through the garden.

robin andrea said...

Very beautiful. Must have been a delight to walk through there.

ArtsyAllieKat said...

Ooh, ooh, I know the name of one of them. The next to the last one is "Ida's Magic", I think. I fell in love with it when it first came out and spent an outrageous amount of money for it. Very out of character for me, but it was really beautiful. But you know, I love my double Kwanza ( a ditch lily relative, LOL!) just as much. I just love daylilies in general.

MamaHen said...

Oh man! I love that 3rd one down; the red! Wow! you may remember my small, pitiful start of a daylily garden. I've only got about 4 different varieties but I'm working on it. :)

R.Powers said...

Went to a daylilly festival at a daylilly farm run by Krishnas once. They had breaded, fried daylilly blossoms for sale.

Kind of tasteless, but I can say that I have eaten Daylillies now.

Rurality said...

WLB, oh yeah. It was a treat.

RA, I also loved that they said they didn't try to keep the garden "perfect". They said they hated shrubs that looks like meatballs!

AAK, sounds like you need to join the Iris and Daylily society! Several of my friends up here are in it.

Annie, there were so many more beautiful ones, but of course they weren't all in focus LOL.

FC, I had heard that you could eat the blooms. Never tried them though.

Pamela said...

I have a few growing -- I'm sure I don't have the sticktoitiveness to handle a whole garden full of them. but, wow. aren't they pretty. Especially that one that looks like a frilly little frock that a little girl would wear to a party.

Anonymous said...

My daughter's on a track team, so she wants to know what "callypigious", or however u spelled it :) means--? And, I'm a gardener w/hundreds of daylilies, and a runner, so I want to know too!
Peace & Limitless Grace, Kristin

Rurality said...

Pamela, that's what it reminded me of too!

Kristin, if you click on that "Beautyberry" link, you can see the list of words using that root. "Callipygian" means having a shapely butt!

One of the readers commented, "Before my daughter's cross country team runs a race, they gather together and yell, 'callipygious!'"

Omelay said...

they all look very tasty. ours make it into our salads. it brightens things up a bit

countrypeapie said...

I've never seen a ruffly daylily before! A friend of mine once mentioned that she had eaten breaded, fried squash blossoms while in Italy. I didn't know you could eat daylilies, though, until I got my hands on Stalking the Wild Asparagus. I'll have to give it a try sometime -- the salad idea sounds good in this heat.

Ontario Wanderer said...

I had no idea that there were so many types of daylillies. Thanks for sharing!

Bramblemoon Farm said...

Wow! That is awesome:) I would love to do that, but it would expensive starting with just a couple of varieties and working up to 100 or more!