Community Heroes Series
From the August 2003 issue of Alabama Living magazine

A Day in the Life of a Daylily Grower

Article by Kay Marshall

Daylilies. You’ve seen them growing wild alongside country roads and highways. Their brightly hued petals of orange or yellow create a splash of colour as they peek up from the kudzu or wave at us from clannish clusters in patches of moist ground, around mailboxes or in empty fields. These daylilies are cultivated forms of the wild types of the flower which have "escaped" and are growing as if they are wild. Daylilies give more for less than almost any other plant, and they’ve been around for generations.
The tawny or orange daylily that we’re most familiar with produces tall stems, and for good reason. Sometimes referred to as the “outhouse lily” or the “ditch lily” the roadside variety was commonly planted to soften and disguise the pit privy and then left to cover the site when a new pit was dug and the outhouse moved. At some old, rural homesteads, one could determine the sequence of movement of the privy simply by the size of the daylily clumps.
The roadside daylily is one of the most reliable harbingers of summer, for when it blossoms, one knows that summer is just a few days away.

Still - in a way - nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small - we haven't the time -
and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. - Georgia O'Keeffe

What is a daylily?
Modern daylilies have been developed through a complex history of hybridization and even have family trees consisting of parents and grandparents, just like humans!
The daylily, as a member of the lily family Liliaceae, is a cousin to such plants as onions and hyacinths, but the family tree branches off from there. True lilies are in the plant genus Lilium, but daylilies are members of the genus Hemerocallis. The word Hemerocallis is derived from two Greek words meaning "beauty" and "day,” in reference to the unique way that each flower lasts only one day.
To make up for their lack of longevity, there are multiple buds on each plant and several stalks in each clump of plants. The flowering period of a clump is usually several weeks long so a garden filled with daylilies is a summer-long investment of daytime beauty.

Daylilies are native to EuroAsia but since the early 1900’s, hybridizers, or growers, in the United States and England have improved the quality the plant and have introduced new colors to the species.
Originally, the only colors were yellow, orange, and fulvous red - a brownish-clay like shade. But thanks to the efforts of the Yanks and the Brits there are now wider ranges of colors from near-whites and pastels to vivid reds, purples, and various other shades... the daylily is no longer just an “outhouse” flower! However, despite the efforts of hybridizers, pure white and pure blue daylilies are still undiscovered, and there is a frenzy among avid growers to breed these two colors; those who do will be assured of a well-padded bankroll.
While many growers search for those elusive colors, Sharon Price, of Sharon’s Daylilies, is focused on her personal quest for a near-white, red-eyed round, ruffled daylily... and what a quest it has become!
estled down a road in Vernon, Alabama you’ll find a delightful display of blossoming colour. Ablaze with colour is a more apt description of Sharon’s commercial gardens. Daylilies are the passion of hybridizers, like Price, who strive to cultivate the finest and most beautiful daylilies. Price, a resident of Vernon for the past thirty-six years, first got hooked on daylilies in 1989 when a friend gave her some “unnamed” daylilies. “Later, I went to a garden that had ‘named’ daylilies, and I’ve been hooked ever since,” she admits. What began as a hobby quickly turned into a “growing” business venture, and Price now sells her flowers and seedlings to thousands of daylily lovers the world over through her Website, Sharon's Daylilies, and through mail-order brochures. She is, to put it mildly, a blooming success!

Think that flower growing is an easy task? Not so, says Price. “I grow over 600 different varieties of daylilies in addition to over 500 seedlings...it’s a full-time endeavor”. The enjoyment outweighs the work as her enthusiasm is clear when speaking to her. Good thing too, because a day in the life of a daylily grower is busy.
Remember her quest? She pursues it everyday in her garden. Her goal sounds simple, but it will be a dedicated task that will take years to achieve.
“I want to create a variety with red eyes and edges,” she said, “I want a large, round flower with a lot of ruffled edges. I’m not there yet, but I’m close,” she laughed.
While some hybridizers prefer to focus on colour, Price prefers to focus on the flower’s form. “I love the large, round ruffled flowers - they're my specialty,” said Price. Although she currently does not enter her flowers in shows, she has seedlings that she plans to introduce within the next three years. “From seed pod to introduction time usually takes five years, so I'm right on track,” she said.
To "introduce" is to register the daylily with the American Hermocallis Society. The grower names the new variety, and it can then be listed in seed catalogs.

A day in her garden...
So what’s a day in the life of a daylily grower like? Sharon ends each day during planting season by picking selected blooms. The blooms picked the day before are refrigerated overnight, and the pollen is collected the next morning. “I get up very early,” she said, “and I can't wait to get out to the garden!” Price then decides what flower she wants to pollinate and tags the flower with a number. This will denote the pod and pollen of the new variety she hopes to create. Once pollination has occurred, the seeds are gathered and kept until podding occurs. Once they get leaves, Price plants the new variety. “It usually takes a full year before they'll bloom, so it takes patience to be a daylily grower,” she chuckled. “There’s a lot of hybridizers who are very scientific about plant-breeding, and they’re much more specific in their methods. I’m more of the backyard variety of hybridizer, but I do work with tetraploids only,” she stressed.
Tetraploids are the number of chromosomes within the plants that she grows. Like in humans these plant chromosomes determine the colour and appearance of the daylilies. It's the genetics of flowers. Daylilies have parents and grandparents too... full family trees that hybridizers use to increase variety and to accomplish each individual quest for the most beautiful flower.
“I'm not a scientific person, “said Price, “but I enjoy what I do. It's like Christmas every day when I go out and see what I've bred. You might find a pink one or a purple one, or a red one, and they all come out of the same seed pot!”
With her dedication and persistence, Sharon is sure to reach her goal. She loves for visitors to see her commercial gardens and extends a welcome as warm as her garden sign.
haron's Daylilies is located at 1375 Holliday Road in Vernon, Alabama. If you are unable to visit her gardens, Sharon ships her flowers from April through October and emphasizes that all of her plants are state inspected and guaranteed true to name. Phone her at 205.695.9804. If you can make the trip you’re certain not to be disappointed. “I love this business but I really love to see visitors to the gardens “ooohh and ahhhh”, and I love to see how much they really enjoy the flowers. It makes me feel proud of what I’ve accomplished in my gardens!” Indeed.

Kay Marshall is the Internet Projects Coordinator and editor for TEC

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