there are other Hemerocallis placements in the CoL which I find problematic as well, for example why are there separate entries under H. fulva and H. fulva var. fulva. Wouldn't those actually be the same?

The reviewer of the family appears to be a "lumper" rather than a "splitter". Personally, I would not place much confidence in the CoL; I would rely on the biologists who are more intimately familiar with the plants they are classifying and who have published research on the taxonomy of those plants.

In my experience, many (or most) of the Tet spiders have narrow leaves. I'll have to go out and look to see if other Tet's have the same types of leaves. My garden only has 2 or 3 dips.

Interesting conversation. What I gather is that the Japanese species have narrow leaves but are very rust susceptible.

Sue asked, "Do you see a difference in leaf width between foliage habits or ploidy?"

Good question. I have often wondered that myself. Just from a broad sense, it seemed to me that more of my tet seedings exhibited rust susceptibility vs. my dip seedlings. I had a variety of crosses for both. But .... it may be I just happened to have more rust susceptible tet crosses than dip crosses.

Now whether more ev, sev, or dor habits exhibited rust .... I do not know. It would seem likely that dormants would be more likely to rid the plant of rust if they go into a hard dormant stage. But I rarely get freezing temps here. I am in another world living in the deep south compared to most here on this forum.

All I know is that it is very frustrating to see the semi-annual outbreaks of rust among all my daylilies. Fall seems to be the worst season. But this coming year may be a whole different ballgame if I don't get any cold weather this Winter. I am still in the 80's here and it is hot & humid .... and miserable.

beckygardener said:I don't believe that having narrow leaves means that a daylily will (or will not) do well in a hot climate. What I have noticed though, is that more of my narrow-leafed seedlings seem to be more rust resistant than wide leaf seedlings. Rust resistance ratio of narrow vs. wide leaf seedlings is much higher.

I'm glad to see someone mention this. I'm in Zone 8a (hot summers, often high humidity). I've noticed that I have much more problem with rust on wide-leafed cultivars and hardly any on narrow leafed ones. Also the narrow leafed cultivars continue to look good after blooming whereas many of my wide-leafed ones look really spent (though with water and cooler weather they come back). I wish more nurseries would not the type of foliage on their offerings.

I've never even thought about foliage width versus rust resistance, but now that you mention it...

Could this have anything to do with diploid vs tetraploid (dips tend to have narrower foliage)? I recall reading somewhere once where some surveys seemed to indicate that dips, on the whole, tended to be more rust resistant than the tets. (Obviously this does not mean every dip is resistant, nor every tet susceptible... but in terms of % of the plants of each ploidy tested, there was a higher % of resistant dips than resistant tets.)

FWIW, I live in zone 9 and I still have some dips here, and they mostly (all?) tend to have narrow leaves. I wouldn't say that they don't do well (unless there is some other issue, such as tree root competition), or do worse than the tets. BEAUTIFUL EDGINGS and TUSCAWILLA TRANQUILITY immediately come to mind - both have narrow foliage, both do quite well here.