My "L" word pick for this morning is in relation to branching, laterals. Laterals or side branches, increase the number of buds produced on a scape and can give a pleasing presentation of blooms when buds open at different levels. The AHS Dictionary of Daylily Terms has an excellent description of branching including laterals.
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

'L' for Fred Manning's 'Lillian' series. I enjoy seeing the photos of all of them. I grow 'Lillian's Vapor Trail'. It got another high rating mark from me this past week when I cleaned off the old dead foliage and discovered it went from a double fan last spring to seven fans. That was the best fan increase I had. I really like the bloom, of course, so a mark for that. It rebloomed instantly last year and got a mark for that. It may be setting the benchmark high for other daylilies here .

"L" today will be for longest blooming. "Longest blooming" is certainly something I want to learn a lot more about.
I would love to see a lot of discussion in the forum about longest blooming.
The thread "Daylilies that bloom for over a month, two months, and three months?" in Daylilies forum
http://forums.gardenweb.com/di...

Most daylily people are aware of leaf streak and leafminer on daylilies, but there's another L villain that is less familiar, Lopidea confluenta :

http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

More common on daylilies than the above is Lygus lineolaris, the tarnished plant bug:

http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

They're harder to spot because the adults will duck out of sight under the buds when you approach, and the babies (called nymphs) look quite different and resemble speedy aphids. They can be distinguished from aphids, if you can get a close enough look at them, by their being solitary as opposed to feeding in groups and moving much faster than an aphid. As they get bigger they also develop dark spots on the back (see daylily dictionary pictures). Here's a picture of one of the very young little devils on a daylily anther. You can see that another adjacent stamen has been damaged and rotted, did he do it? Can't be sure but it's possible.



Here's a picture of a couple of adult Lygus lineolaris on opening daylily buds, quite different but also potentially damaging.



Sorry these are not lovely L flower pictures but I have better pictures of bugs

(Edited to reduce image size)

Enjoyed everyone's entries....

I have only one L, and that is Line breeding. Here is a link to part 1 (there are 2 parts) of a blog entry on someone who does line breeding for rust resistance. http://daylilybreeder.blogspot... . (Yes, I'm going to keep beating that rust resistance drum.)

(Sorry to be so abrupt. I found significant rust on a daylily I had purchased largely because the hybridizer had suggested that it had little or none (in his garden); it was meant to be used in crosses with a particular rusty daylily to improve resistance, but I guess that's out. While I was glaring at this plant, I discovered that my dog (who yesterday, on a walk, rolled in something brown and smelly) had once again escaped out the fence which goes across the creek, then from there into the neighbor's yard. (We had just patched an escape route a week ago... now he has another one.) I had to go next door to hunt him down (their one acre property is extremely weedy and overgrown), but he was in full-on hunting mode and would NOT come when called or respond to shaking of the dog treats bag. I just had lunch (late) and I'm still aggravated with him.... and now I have to get back outside to the plants.)

Large blooms really catch my eye in the garden, I mean you notice them clear across the yard.

L - late blooming daylilies. I need more of these in my garden.

Leafminer's meandering trail.

LIVEHEAD this is when the blooms are picked off of the scape the same day they opened. Usually done the day before a garden tour so that no one sees a bunch of dead blooms when they come by early.