The daylily flower

Take a cursory look at the daylily flower and a holistic evaluation of its beauty takes place in the subconscious, passing over its component parts and colour to take in the overall effect presented by the plant. Although an in-depth analysis of the individual elements of flower anatomy and its colours is pointless for the layman, these features have particular significance for the breeder, for whom the flower should be a collection of resources which can be drawn upon during the design of a breeding program. This way of thinking prevailed over the intention to carry out an analysis of the effect that modern cultivation has had on the appearance and pigmentation of the flowers, deftly manipulating the genetic traits attributed to them to generate new, hitherto unknown, forms. A familiarity with these characteristics and the means of their inheritance should be the alphabet of all who intend to devote themselves to creating daylilies, and who hope to be successful in doing so. A generally accepted taxonomy of daylilies is based around four basic flower shapes (fig.1): typical (a), full (b), spider (c) and unusual (d) flower varieties. Fig.1 Basic daylily flower varieties...

Sweet Malinda (a)

Dashing Double (b)

Complicated (c)

Calico Spider (d)

This division based on the apparent differences in the daylily's floral characteristics is very general in nature; it doesn't preclude a more analytical analysis of the more individual categories, nor enable the categorization of intermediate forms. The presented analysis will deal with flowers from the first group (typical), as these represent my chief area of interest and the design of breeding programs. The remaining groups will receive relatively less attention.