Background history:

'Purple De Oro' is a dormant introduced in 2000 by DeGroot.

This plant can be found in our Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Purple De Oro') .

Please join in, if you own this plant! We would love to know more! I award an acorn for performance information posted to this thread.



Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Purple De Oro')

I bought this plant a few years ago because I wanted another short one and I was looking for a purplish color. It's perfect in that regard. It spreads well but I don't feel that the bud count is as high as I would have expected. Perhaps that is because it is still new (and I have moved it once). Time will tell.

I have this one and love it. It produces lovely blooms and doesn't fade in the sun. It multiplies well too. This was the second Daylily variety I purchased and the one that got me hooked. I have it planted in resin whiskey barrel planters and it does great for me.

I had this one for many years, it was actually one of the 1st named daylilies i bought. It multiplied well, bloomed OK, usually did rebloom, but I just never felt it bloomed as well as I thought it should. My tastes changed to larger flowers, this one left my garden.

I've had Purple D'Oro in my gardens for about 6 years, so clearly - it's cold-hardy. I'd give it points just for that, being a cold climate gardener. It's definitely reliable. As @alilyfan mentioned, I have discovered that I do tend to prefer a larger bloom size - something that really stands out from across the gardens and really pops with colour. If you are looking for that effect, this is not the daylily you're looking for.

However... for the front of a border, where you need something shorter... this fills the space just fine. It blooms every year and, unlike comments by some, it does put out a steady supply of flowers and the clump is usually well-covered while it's blooming - easily a half-dozen flowers or more per day... which, for the size of this daylily... means you see more blooms than foliage. My one disappointment, though... having not had expectations beyond thinking this would be like Stella D'Oro, except 'purple'... it's not purple.

Despite the name, this is not a purple daylily. It's red (ish). At best, you could maybe say 'burgundy'. But calling it purple is a stretch well beyond most people's imagination.

So, if you are looking for a small-flowered daylily that's reliably cold-hardy for the front of a border, in a reddish-burgundy range, that blooms well and has always been rust-free... then this one is perfect.

I got Purple de Oro in 2009 and when I planted it, the star magnolia tree in that area was only 3 feet tall. Well, now that magnolia is over 15 feet tall and the daylilies in that area do not get as much sunlight as they need. Purple de Oro is still very small because of this, but it keeps coming back year after year. I actually dug it up in 2018 and gave it away, but I think a piece is coming back.

I noticed that there are two pictures in the database posted by Drdanikc and one of these pictures is labeled as "Purple de Oro Sport". I am wondering if these pictures should be deleted from the database, because they are not Purple de Oro.

6/16/2011 - looking pretty good back then, but the bud count and branching hasn't been the greatest and I've never had rebloom, but I really haven't got it in a spot for it to thrive. I've never seen rust on it.


6/20/2010 - this is a horrible picture of Purple de Oro inthis next photo, but it shows how it compares to other daylilies for color and height.
Purple de Oro (bottom of pic) is registered at 20 inches with a 3 inch bloom.
Moonlit Masquerade (far right) is registered at 26 inches with a 5.5 inch bloom.
Buttered Popcorn (in back) is registered at 32 inches with a 6 inch bloom.
The orange-red daylily is a NOID.


6/20/2010 - although it is not registered as a bi-tone, it sometimes looks like one. I don't have many recent pictures, but in most all of the pictures I do have, the blooms are never fully open. That could be because of the shade issue.

Purple de Oro was one of my first daylily purchases after Stella de Oro. I was making a new bed with a purple, gold, and white color scheme. Here's the first time it bloomed in 2018. That's Pippa on the right.

It seemed to grow fine, but I was always disappointed in the color. Rather than a true purple, it seemed to have a yellowish cast--as if someone had taken Stella de Oro and dipped it in dye, but the yellow kept coming through.

I also found it wasn't very sunfast. Here it is in 2019:


I moved it to a spot out of the direct sun, but last summer during my big rust outbreak, it developed rust right away and repeatedly. I finally dug it up and threw it out.

@blue23rose , Vickie the flower in question look more like Rosy Returns to me. I bought what was supposed to be Purple D'oro years ago and got the wrong plant. I never pursued it after that. I have seen it growing in a friend's garden. It was much taller than eighteen inches. It was loaded with blooms at the time. She has a few clumps of it and is very happy its performance.

Thanks, Mike. I thought about proposing to have those two photos by Drdanikc moved to the general daylily listing.

I bought Purple de Oro from a local garden center. It was clearly labeled. And when I went back later in the year, half of their PdO looked like the pictures you see in our database, and half of them looked like the one I ended up with:



That's messed up right there. So I still call it Purple de Oro, and I didn't get rid of it yet because it's one of the latest blooming rebloomers I own, almost always with scapes in late September or October.

But buyer beware. Not everything out there being sold as Purple de Oro is actually Purple de Oro.

I've had my Purple de Oro since August 2020. Last year was it's first blooming summer. It's in a fairly nice spot at the front of Upper Daylily Hill and gets enough light.
This first year in the ground, it bloomed from June 30 to July 25 with 23 blooms and a last surprise rebloom on September 20. The flowers varied widely, some more striped some more purple. But I'd say that it did very well for a brand new plant. I am a fan of the minis and I like the look of PdO.

@Lyshack, Tim, I guess your PdO could have been tissue cultured. I bought a few plants from the local big box stores and eventually got rid of them.

Here is a thread that discusses tissue culture: The thread ""Tissue Culture" -- What is it and why is it bad?" in Daylilies forum

That's probably exactly what happened, Vickie! That picture Tim posted looks exactly like a washed-out Purple de Oro--it was probably tissue-cultured.

Interesting. And it makes sense, because it wasn't just one plant in the whole PdO section, it was a lot of them. What an awful practice. First, they could have waited to make sure they bloomed right before they sold them to the garden center. And then, I was at the garden center later, in bloom season, and the garden center still had them out and was selling them as PdO. They had to know something was wrong. Boo! to everyone involved.

I've been thinking of getting the right PdO and growing them together to make sure it isn't something with my soil, but I grow lots of daylilies in the area and they are all fine. It's interesting, but it's not what I paid for. It was still cheap by comparison to others I own.

I would try that, Tim. It would really be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison.

Lyshack said: I bought Purple de Oro from a local garden center. It was clearly labeled. And when I went back later in the year, half of their PdO looked like the pictures you see in our database, and half of them looked like the one I ended up with:



That's messed up right there. So I still call it Purple de Oro, and I didn't get rid of it yet because it's one of the latest blooming rebloomers I own, almost always with scapes in late September or October.

But buyer beware. Not everything out there being sold as Purple de Oro is actually Purple de Oro.

This doesn't look 'washed out' to me at all, but rather a different daylily altogether. There is a prominent midrib striped consistently in the bloom, the throat appears greener and you said it blooms later/reblooms. It may not be a tissue culture at all, but merely an incorrectly labeled plant. It is definitely frustrating to not get what you pay for, but most places won't honor the variety to be true, just warranty the plant against dying. The bloom you have though is very pretty, especially if it is a good performer.
Also to note that it was mentioned the stella purple one is not colorfast in the sun and fades out easily, as some dl do, so the photos in the database can vary a lot, depending on if the person took the photo in the morning or at 6 pm when they got home from work. Also many people are so excited about that first bloom, that they take photos of their dl and post them in the database and those first few blooms can be pretty unrepresentative as to what it should be vs a mature plant.

This is a great plant, great color, it multiplies quickly and is very popular with garden visitors.

2022…I had a good run out of Purple de Oro this year. It started blooming July 3-27, then had a rebloom from September 12-21. Not many flowers rebloom for me, so it's always nice to see one that does.

2023 update…Purple de Oro had a very long bloom season from July 5- August 21, with a short rebloom from October 15-20 with a few more flowers

Apparently, Razzmatazz (which has its own Daylily of the Day thread) is the same plant as Purple de Oro. Linking its reviews here for those who want to compare:

The thread "Daylily of the Day: Razzmatazz" in Plants of the Day forum