Traub was one of the first to question whether colchicine was present in daylilies: "Colchicine Poisoning in Relation to Hemerocallis and Some Other Plants" http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

When the original research was repeated colchicine was not found:
"Substanzen der Herbstzeitlose und ihre Derivate XLV1 Verbreitung der Colchicinalkaloide im Pflanzenreich" http://link.springer.com/artic...

Colchicine is apparently present only in plants of a particular botanical family (which does not include daylilies):
"Colchicine is still a chemical marker for the expanded Colchicaceae" http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

Another test of whether colchicine is present in daylilies and other species:
"Screening of Ten Plant Species for Metaphase Chromosome Preparation in Adult Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) Using an Inoculation Technique" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Scientific research always must be confrmed by being repeated by many researchers before it is accepted (scientific research is never proven - it can be disproven or when not disproven it becomes accepted). When some researchers find an observation but significant numbers of other reseachers do not then the finding is not accepted.

There can be problems with translations of foreign languages to English. There are many scientific papers in Chinese about daylilies that use the term colchicine; whether that is being used to mean toxin, whether it is assumed that the toxin in daylilies is colchicine and appropriate tests to identify the toxin are not made or whether chemical tests are made that do not distinguish between different toxins, is difficult to determine.

Currently the presence of colchicine is accepted only in the Colchicaceae family of plants and it is used as an identifier of members of that family (perhaps by western researchers?). I have contacted a researcher for more information about identifying colchicine in plants.

Thanks, Maurice, I do bow to and appreciate your knowledge of the literature on Colchicine, though the German citation does not provide an English translation, and restricted access to both papers does not help me with details or understanding the meaning and results of the follow-up Hemerocallis tests (is it possible to translate or quote them out a bit, to show how the abstracts or research results indicate an absence of Colchicine in daylily flowers, and how that is found by the mosquito tests?).

So, I agree with what you say about the validity of research findings - though I'm not yet comprehending the particular focus or lab methods used for these two papers (for example, were they testing all parts of each plant type, including flower parts, or was that found to be superflous given the available method?) or able to see the data for daylilies reported in these two trails, due to the German-language and Abstract-only limitations.

I guess I'll leave my previous post and links up for now ... out of an abundance of caution (or an abundance of ignorance) and edit the post to use more qualifying language ... until I can grasp the answers to such questions. But, I trust your take on those referenced papers; I'm very glad that there is further discussion and research being brought to bear, and hope to learn enough to know whether I should pull the information on daylily flowers in my previous post. I'm very encouraged to hear that you may be able to facilitate additional information through a researcher familiar with Colchicine, thanks!

The mosquito research used dried daylily flowers in their tests.

The research that looked for colchicine in species that did and did not belong to the Colchicaceae used leaf tissue and used daylilies as one of the species.

The original research that found colchicine in a number of species, in which colchicine was not found in later research, and also German, used different tissues but also "whole" plants.

The later German research used daylily roots/tubers and failed to find colchicine in daylilies.

A basic problem is whether colchicine is present only in members of the Cochicaceae family or whether it has been confirmed as being present in species in other families.

Plant toxins, their presence or absence, is a minefield of potential problems. Plants may or may not produce specific compounds depending on their genetics and depending on their environment. Some plants that become infected with certain disease producing bacteria or fungi, etc., can then produce specific compounds that may help fight those invaders and which they do not produce otherwise. Those compounds may have effects if the plants are eaten. Even more of a problem is that many plant species have bacteria and fungi within them that do not harm the plants but that can produce toxins that harm anything eating the plants. Microorganisms such as those are called endophytes and each one may or may not be present in specific individual plants of the same plant species.

There are quite possibly other compounds present in daylilies that can cause stomach upsets (or other upsets), especially if a sizeable amount is eaten, and which therefore may be classifiable as 'toxins'.

Unfortunately my past attempts to obtain information from researchers have often failed; perhaps this time will be different:-)

I hear you about attempts to obtain more info from researchers on their papers, lol! I know, I know ... they are very busy people whose time and pursuits are not entirely their own to spend. I'll hope along with you that a response might show up. :}

Awesome extension of information on your part, too, both in helping us to see questions regarding differing research sources, and in drawing additional informative layers into the discussion of toxicity.