Chapter 2: Form and Species - Conclusion (and, again, just my take on it)
Species Background
Originating in Russia, Japan, Korea and China, daylilies species are found in the wild on mountainous terrain. Breeding has taken the original yellow, orange, and brownish red colors forward into producing those that are purple, streaked pink and cream, near-blue, etc., and none of those colors are seen outwardly in the species. The simple shape and number of petals on daylily species have also come to include spiders, doubles, and many unusual forms.
The author points out that the focus of this book is not on definitive classification of species plants, but on employing what we know of some of the more detailed species to illustrate how we might recognize factors that differ even at the species level. For example, H. minor has grass-like leaves and its scape may be prone to bending toward the soil. Others, like H. middendorffii are very early bloomers. And, some species may even show slight variations between fans located in one environment versus another (perhaps something similar, though perhaps unrelated, to north-south differences we see today in how “toothed” flowers can look, or the performance of some of the patterned daylily cultivars?).
Roots
A couple of the daylily species plants, citrina and fulva, show the two extremes of root types found in daylilies.
H. citrina has dense roots that are long but not spreading (no rhizomes), cylindrical (no bulbs), and are covered with smaller hair-like roots. This is a photo of Crystal Blue Persuasion’s roots which seem to have similar characteristics:
H. fulva, on the other hand, has many bulbous roots that can store up nutrients deep under the soil and long runners that burrow out and away from the parent fan to create new shoots. I think there is a similar style in the roots of Paper Butterfly:
Scapes
The author includes definitions regarding scapes that I find very helpful. If I understand correctly, the scape starts at the bottom, without leaf. Then at some point upward it will have a bract (leaf-like growths) and that is where the stalk becomes what we would usually call a branch or branches (and/or where prolifs may appear) at or above those bracts. New branches also split out where bracts appear again higher up on that first main branch. I’d never actually noticed this, and it helps me to visualize the different parts of what before I’d only called "the scape." Here’s an ATP database photo that shows scapes with bracts, with a branch or branches above the bract (easier to see if you click the picture to enlarge it).
Branching
Daylily species have a variety of branching habits that help to identify them, from no branching to highly branched. For example:
No branching: dumortieri
Some branching: aurantiaca
Multiple branching: multiflora, fulva, hakunensis, coreana
Buds
Daylily flowers grow inside the buds, some of which may even appear just above a final set of bracts, without any stems. These buds that have no stems, connected directly above a set of final bracts, may be seen in the dumortieri and middendorfii species. In that case the junction between the bracts and the buds is not counted as further branching, and the buds are defined as “sessile” (attached directly to a base).
Species Flower Colors
Because there are so many differences in how species colors (and name spellings, etc.) are reported, I’m going to just show some of the ones represented in the ATP database. You may also want to peek at photos linked at
http://www.hemerocallis-specie.... There may also be species and photos at AHS, but I am unable to find links to them.
Pods
Daylily pods may be used to identify various species plants, both from their range of size and by shape. Some are more oblong, others balloon out near the tip end, and some have coloring beyond the initial green on the outside of the pod.
Seeds
The size of seeds in daylily species plants may differ, from about 1/16 inch (H. minor) to about 1/3 inch (H. coreana) but are not considered good indicators, in and of themselves, to identify species (or modern cultivars, for that matter). In order roughly from smallest to largest, the author presents a photo with a number of species seeds: H. minor, H. thunbergii, H. hakuunensis, H. multiflora, H. citrina, and H. coreana.
Species Comparison
The chapter ends with various descriptive grids that have been developed or proposed for summarizing all of the species' differing characteristics by comparison and contrast. What follows directly after those grids, in an appendix to the chapter, will please anyone who is visually oriented:
An Awesome Pictorial Appendix in the Book Showing Twelve Daylily Species that are Behind Many Modern Cultivars
Page 84, and culminating in an integrated grid of pictures by page 102.
http://www.telmarcgardens.com/...
Here is where I would not even attempt to find photos to match those in the book; I have not found, through any other source I have been able to access, such a collection of photos that would even come close to matching it. Each of the twelve species in the book are showcased in simple, beautiful and very illustrative picture grids, sorted at first by photos of the main forms we've learned about (seeds, pods, flowers, buds, branching, leaves, and roots), and then presented en mass in a culmination of fully-gridded photo-rama pictures with all species forms side-by-side.
I wish I had read this far into the book two years ago when I first downloaded it. I will be printing out those identification tables and photos to use as a point of comparison and contrast as I look at their modern descendant daylilies growing in my own garden!
