Hi there,
I have had ditch lilies on my property for years and have been around them all my life. This year, for the first time that I have noticed, a bunch of my ditch lilies have turned into doubles. The flowers stamens are oddly shaped and look like tree branches. There is no detectable pistil. Is this normal?








Glen

Haven't seen this before & have had ditch lilies for 25+ years. Very pretty, actually. Looks like a tiny malformed pistil [all white] down in the center of the last two pictures. Is this more than one fan or clump?

Perhaps a piece of Hemerocallis fulva 'Kwanso' got mixed in and wasn't obvious enough to spot before? It does not have a normal pistil. There are pictures here although note that quite a few of these are wrong because people confuse 'Kwanso' and 'Flore Pleno' and have put some that appear to be 'Flore Pleno' under the wrong name. Both are triploid like the original "ditch lily" Hemerocallis fulva 'Europa'.

Daylily (Hemerocallis fulva 'Kwanso')

SunriseSide said: Haven't seen this before & have had ditch lilies for 25+ years. Very pretty, actually. Looks like a tiny malformed pistil [all white] down in the center of the last two pictures. Is this more than one fan or clump?

Hi thanks for your response, more than one clump and in three locations.
Also found it at my place of work in the ditch too.

Glen

So I picked one and dismantled the flower. There is three Sepals and ten pedals and lots of stamens. I believe this phenomenon is called Polytepal
Apparently the extra pedals are derived and produced from the stamens?

I asked my biology prof buddy and he said it's the plants reaction to weather conditions. If it wet enough the plant will produce more pedals to attract more pollinators. This has been a very wet year here. I work for a collage and we have a agro greenhouse program and the prof there told me about the Polytepal








Glen

That's pretty much like 'Kwanso', which some also call the double ditch lily as it's basically a double version thereof. Here is the abnormal female part of 'Kwanso', much the same as yours.



It's considered a double rather than polymerous (previously known as polytepalous):

https://daylilies.org/daylily-...