Just wondering if anyone has seen this before. Short fans appear to be growing from the center.




Just strange.

I have had those when I have taken indoor plants or plants in more shade and have moved them to a sunnier place, but part of the time, those outer leaves were long and slender just on those first early leaves and they became better with a more mature root system.

Were the long leaves there alone for a while before the short middle ones appeared? If so a possibility is that the plant set a dormant bud that is only now starting to sprout. A daylily can go dormant without the older leaves dying back (in a cold winter climate outdoors they would likely be killed by the cold though). @admmad may have some insight.

Yes, I have seen this before on "evergreen" plants brought inside to grow under lights during the winter.
Although not common, it is as Sooby posted, the plant went dormant (the general botanical meaning of dormant = it stopped visibly growing). The growing point, which is nestled in the centre of the fan of leaves stopped making new leaves and formed a bud. The previous leaves that had been produced were not old enough to die or were not killed by the environment (low temperatures, short days, etc.). The bud then sprouted producing its new fan of leaves. I have seen this with daylilies that were registered as "evergreen" when I have them growing inside during the winter. 'Crystal Blue Persuasion' is one that has done it several times, however, the photo is of 'Coyote Moon'.

Thank you for your response Deryl and Sooby.

@Sooby: it looked like normal growth until it didn't. I'm not sure if there was any delay of growth between the initial normal fan leaves and the start of the short ones growing from the center.

A bit more info:

I have about 200 daylily seedlings growing indoors under grow lights. All growing under the same conditions. This is the only one with this strange growth which I noticed the other day. Initially, it looked like all the other seedlings and had the long leaves (now the outer leaves) then started growing the short fans from the center.

I don't have the date this one sprouted but most of the seedlings sprouted in September and October. I planted one seed per cup or starter cell. This one was repotted in either late November or early December. This is when I didn't transfer the label when repotting three of them.

This is a pic of the indoor set up taken about a month ago of one of the shelving units. There are two three foot lights per shelf. These are grown in the basement where the temperature has remained in the 60s over the winter.


As the seedlings grew, the height of the space provided increased to accommodate the growth. You can see that the seedlings are grown close together but not to the extent that any would be stretching for light. The seedlings on each shelf are generally the same size in terms of height and are on different shelves depending on how tall they are.