Types of Daylilies – What Makes New Daylilies Better?

Flower Colors and Patterns

Early daylilies had a very limited color range that included orange, yellow and a muted red. Thanks to a century of breeding by talented hybridizers around the world, daylilies now come in every color except the elusive blue. It also used to be common for the pigments in the petals to progressively fade from morning until night, but newer cultivars retain their color all day. While most daylilies were solid colored in the past, many modern daylilies have an interesting contrasting-colored eye or edging on the petals.

Bloom Performance

Daylilies remain “day lilies” today, meaning that the individual flowers last for 24 hours. However, some have developed a trait called “nocturnal”, which means their flowers open in late afternoon and remain open through all or part of the following day. Many modern daylilies bloom more than once per season, and nearly all are heavily budded so they stay in bloom for months instead of weeks like older daylilies. While daylilies once had weak stems that carried less than ten flower buds apiece, newer daylilies have much thicker, sturdier stems that can carry as many as three times the flowers without flopping over from their weight.  

Our Favorite Daylilies

At Garden Crossings, we offer around 20 unique daylily cultivars – you can explore them all right here. It’s tough to choose favorites, but we are huge fans of those that come from breeder Karol Emmerich. After leaving a career in corporate life, Karol began hybridizing daylilies at her Minnesota home twenty years ago. Her goal was to breed hardy “fancy face” daylilies – meaning those with intricate patterns and details that are typically not cold hardy – to last through her Minnesota winters. She’s done exactly that, and we are proud to carry these introductions from Karol:

• ‘Blazing Glory’
• ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’
• ‘King of the Ages’
• ‘Lake of Fire’
• ‘Star of the North’
• ‘Storm Shelter’

The Stout Silver Medal is bestowed on one daylily each year by the American Hemerocallis Society, and it is the highest honor any cultivar can receive. ‘Primal Scream’ was the proud recipient of this award in the early 2000s, so you know you can count on this outstanding cultivar to shine in your landscape. Its sparkling tangerine orange flowers can measure up to nine inches across, standing on three foot tall scapes in summer.