DAYLILIES TOOK RECENT SNOW & ICE “RIGHT IN STRIDE”
by Bill Jarvis | Houston Hemerocallis Society
During the recent unusual hard freeze, daylily foliage died back to ground level. Fortunately, most daylilies took this right in stride and started putting out new foliage within a few days after the freeze ended.
In my garden, a few individual fans did not survive but these were mostly small fans that had been transplanted only 2-3 months prior. Daylilies grown in pots can be at risk with temperatures in the low to mid-teens like we experienced this year. However, normal Houston winter lows in the 20s seldom cause any serious problems to daylilies even when grown in pots.
Weather can play a significant part in when bloom happens. A generally cool spring can delay blooming while just the opposite happens when the winter is mild and spring warm-up comes early. I can remember one year when only 5 daylilies had begun blooming by Mother’s Day weekend (May). But I’ve also seen years where 60-70% of the daylilies were blooming at the end of April. Normal bloom times typically fall somewhere in-between.
Other factors include the maturity or general health of individual fans. Fans that haven’t reached maturity may delay putting up scapes until later in the spring. Plants unusually stressed may bloom later than normal also. Top Show Off is often one of the first daylilies to bloom each year while Caribbean Magic and Christmas In Oz tend to be more mid-season bloomers.
Stress can be from an unusually hot dry summer & fall (like 2011) or a late hard freeze (like this year). Individual plants may also be been stressed by the amount of scapes they produced the previous year. I have one seedling that looks great and blooms like crazy one year but all the blooms stress the plants so the following year it blooms later and doesn’t have a lot of blooms.
