fiwit said:
Sharon did 2 articles on edible daylilies -- the new hybrids aren't safe, but the old ditch lilies are.
http://garden.org/ideas/view/S...
http://garden.org/ideas/view/S...
One of the articles states "Do not eat the buds of any cultivated ornamental daylilies. I know for sure that the old fashioned wild yellow or orange daylilies are fine to eat, and that includes Kwanso".
The Chinese have identified that the old species 'lemon lily' - "wild yellow"?,
Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus, does contain the poison stypandrol/hemerocallin in its roots. For example, in the research paper "Pathological Studies on Central Nerve of Rabbits Induced by Hemerocallin" the researchers wrote "Hemerocallin was extracted from the roots of Hemerocallis lilio—asphodelus" and "This research proved that hemerocallin can hurt nerve fibers and nerve cells seriously，and cause cecity and death at last."
Chinese researchers have investigated some of the daylily species and found the poison in
H. esculenta, H. minor, H. lilioasphodelus, H. thunbergii and
H. altissima. That means that the older species daylilies are not necessarily safe. Another research paper added
H. citrina to the list of daylily species known to contain the poison.
Unfortunately the situation is not simple. One older Chinese research paper indicated that
H. citrina might be safe and might not contain the poison while a recent Chinese research paper indicates that
H. citrina does contain the poison. The details of these research papers are difficult for me to determine as they are written in Chinese with only their abstracts in English.
Although the presence of the poison in the roots of a plant species does not guarantee that the poison is also present in other parts such as the buds or flowers it certainly means that the species
may produce the poison in other plant parts under
some conditions or
sometimes.
