I have found three plants that are suffering from spring sickness, 2 of them were very minor and have already begun to recover. The third one is looking really rough. I need to move it because its not getting nearly enough sunlight. I am wondering if moving it now will help it recover faster - getting more sun, or should I leave it a while and let it recover more before I move it. This is the first time I have ever seen spring sickness in my garden, but after this past winter of -30 several times (zone 4) I can't say I'm not surprised. I do know they will recover on their own, not sure about the move.
Thanks for any help anyone can give me.

I have never tried to move a plant with spring sickness, but I would think the stress the plant is already under would be enough. I would certainly wait till fall if it were mine. But, you are in Zone 5a, so I'll let others in your zone advise you on when would be the best time to move it.

Actually I'm in a sub-climate - zone 4, surrounded by zone 5 thanks to the lovely hill I live on.

People ship plants with spring sickness but whether it affects the survival of the affected fan I don't know. I have dug them up before they got spring sickness in the past and they were fine. Unless it is just a single fan plant there shouldn't be a problem with moving a clump even if a fan or two has spring sickness. We had a whacky winter with a very cold period but seem to have less spring sickness here this year.

I bought this one last summer, so it winter over here, bloomed last year. Its not the sellers fault. I received a nice 3 fan blooming size. It was my winter.

You asked about moving it, so what I meant by people shipping them with spring sickness is that those plants are being moved with it, I didn't mean to imply your specific plant was shipped with spring sickness. Spring sickness happens in areas where the winter is much milder than yours. It may even start before winter and just not grow out until the next spring, we don't know exactly when it starts but it is far from exclusive to very cold winter areas.

I guess if it were me, I'd leave it until late summer and if it looks better, move it then. If it isn't considerably better I'd leave it until next spring to move it. Chances are it will have worked through its spring sickness by then.

That being said...IF by NOT moving it now messes up a plan you have laid out (such as wanting to put something else in the spot where the DL is now) then I'd move it now and take the chance.

I usually have a lot of trouble with spring sickness but strangely enough not so much this spring. We had a harsh winter followed by a late spring. Usually when we have an early spring I see more spring sickness.

Thanks so much for all the advise. I think I'll wait a bit before moving it.

I had a severe damage from otiorhynchus this spring. At first I thought about spring sickness. The symptoms are really similar.

Then, when I started to see adults on leaves I knew what was going on. Adults eat leaves at borders, larvae eat roots. The plant doesn't grow much. I had some DLs with no leaves at all. I had to use a specific product and after a couple days the plants started to recover, except for a couple on which I had to repeat the treatment. So now I'm doubting about the spring sickness I thought affected the plants in the past years.

There's no rule (unfortunately!) that says you can only have one plant problem at a time. So it would be possible to have both spring sickness and weevil damage. I think there were characteristics that were not like weevil damage on what we thought might be your spring sickness but I'd have to find the pictures again.

@sooby, Sue you are right, we cant' be sure. I'll look for pictures. I recall "indentation" on the borders, distorted and poor growth. I gave one of the plant that never grew to a friend and it seems it's growing better than when it was here. So maybe it really was spring sickness and having moved it could have solved the problem.

I put pesticide for weevil larvae around all the plants so another way to check would be to wait for next spring. Maybe looking for some picture would be quicker

Hi please can you tell me what is "Spring sickness". I live in Devon, south-west England. This past winter was extremely wet followed by a spring where we had several freeze/thaw weeks. Several of my daylilies suffered rotting crowns and I feared I would lose them. I lifted them, removed rotting parts, dried them out in the greenhouse for a few days then planted them either in the ground or in pots. All have survived though no scapes yet.

This is about a good a description as I have seen.
https://daylilies.org/ahs_dict...

Some more pictures here:

http://web.ncf.ca/ep568/galler...

From your description it doesn't sound like spring sickness, although some may rot most do not. Spring sickness does occur in the UK though.

Update; this year in my neck of the woods, very cold and wet spring. This daylily "Summer Wind" looked really wonky by the time I had gotten the weeds away from it. In the end, I had contacted "Lasting Dreams" who are about 45 miles away from me. They have an "approved" garden by AHS. He said move it. It didn't get enough sun to begin with. So today, I moved it. Roots looked great. Time will tell. Oh, and after I got all the weeds away from it, (about 10 days or so) the new growth is perfect. Anthony told me, it could be an airflow problem. Time will tell.