Traub was one of the first to question whether colchicine was present in daylilies: "Colchicine Poisoning in Relation to Hemerocallis and Some Other Plants"
http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
When the original research was repeated colchicine was not found:
"Substanzen der Herbstzeitlose und ihre Derivate XLV1 Verbreitung der Colchicinalkaloide im Pflanzenreich"
http://link.springer.com/artic...
Colchicine is apparently present only in plants of a particular botanical family (which does not include daylilies):
"Colchicine is still a chemical marker for the expanded Colchicaceae"
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
Another test of whether colchicine is present in daylilies and other species:
"Screening of Ten Plant Species for Metaphase Chromosome Preparation in Adult Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) Using an Inoculation Technique"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Scientific research always must be confrmed by being repeated by many researchers before it is accepted (scientific research is never proven - it can be disproven or when not disproven it becomes accepted). When some researchers find an observation but significant numbers of other reseachers do not then the finding is not accepted.
There can be problems with translations of foreign languages to English. There are many scientific papers in Chinese about daylilies that use the term colchicine; whether that is being used to mean toxin, whether it is assumed that the toxin in daylilies is colchicine and appropriate tests to identify the toxin are not made or whether chemical tests are made that do not distinguish between different toxins, is difficult to determine.
Currently the presence of colchicine is accepted only in the Colchicaceae family of plants and it is used as an identifier of members of that family (perhaps by western researchers?). I have contacted a researcher for more information about identifying colchicine in plants.
