Brings a smile to read about each person's dance with their daylily blooms. Nothing is odd when it comes to enjoying daylilies in the most meaningful way in our own gardens. For my daylilies, garden display is also behind fencing and off the street, so I love to leave the flowers on. Our dry and hot temps mean that I only very rarely find a spent bloom to be moist or mushy - they are like parchment by late afternoon.
I've come to include spent flower appearance in my list of desirable characteristics when I choose cultivars to include in my home hybridizing. I love the mostly pale spent colors, softly curling or umbrella'd forms that appear as they age, and the way some will almost turn into new flower form by a day or two later ... long, penciled-up throats curved gracefully down and sometimes end in a burst of tiny sprayed tips outward.
