Sue, the foliage shrinks down to 3-4". If you look at the pictures I posted earlier, that's what you will see. Probably in the fall, tall leaves are replaced by short leaves. I'm constantly removing dead leaves, so I can't attest to that. What I do know is that I have daylilies that over the winter will have 3" leaves above the ground. They sit there even if I fertilize them with cal mag (rocket fuel as Dan Trimmer calls it). They never, ever go underground. Remember, down here "cold" means 40 degrees or maybe 38 degrees at the lowest. With the short days of winter, these plants do what they must and they won't recover until the days get substantially longer. Maybe it's just a reaction to the amount of light in a day, but the evergreens don't respond to that, either. All I know is that most people who grow daylilies are backyard gardeners and the science means nothing to them. What matters is that a grower's description matches the growth exhibited by the daylilies they just bought.
Sue, semievergreen is a sliding scale. At one end is evergreen characteristics and at the other is dormant characteristics. In FL these characteristics are dramatically different. We can really, really tell the difference. I have never had a daylily go underground in the fall, but then, I don't knowingly purchase dormants.
