I have never heard of cutting back evergreens to force them to grow new foliage. I thought that cutting back the foliage on daylilies wasn't a good thing (unless they are being divided, or they have rust). It saps energy or something?
For some reason the foliage on the dormant daylilies is appealing to me more and more. I think it may go beyond having fresh green (or blue green) foliage in the spring. I notice that the foliage on many of my evergreen (and SEv) daylilies just looks ratty now, with the leaf ends brown.... and that starts in spring on some of them! It's not rust. It's not leaf streak. But I do think that maybe it is SOME kind of fungal disease. (And I refuse to spray.)
But the foliage on most of my dormant daylilies (OSTERIZED and SEARS TOWER come to mind) just looks good over a long season.
It's bad enough that daylily leaves age and turn brown and have to be pulled... I want the leaves looking good until they start dying of old age, lol.
I have one partly polymerous daylily (maybe 25-33% here; it's hard to say as I quit taking detailed notes (except on seedlings) long ago) that has a beautiful flower (when it opens all the way), but which has ratty foliage. At first I thought it was lack of water (irrigation spray blocked), in part because of little to no increase on the clump. (Of course it doesn't help that the clump gets a lot of shade...) Fixed that problem... got increase.... foliage still looks ratty! I've been reluctantly (partly because there are so few tet poly parents available, partly because this plant has other flaws) using it in crosses, but the cross that I have wanted to make the most (against OSTERIZED, because its foliage always looks good) has been just about impossible.
