Seedfork said:I still cannot envision in my mind zone 9 in Southern Canada and zone 9 in Northern Florida being anywhere near the same growing conditions, That amazes me.
The USDA zones are based on average lowest minimum winter temperature so are not necessarily comparable in different areas for the whole year or even the winter because the number of times the low temperature for that zone is reached in winter may vary by region. Also the zones do not follow lines of latitude horizontally - check out this map (probably the older USDA version as it includes Canada) on which you can zoom in to BC on the far left and while there follow also up the coast to Alaska which also has zones milder than one might expect:
http://planthardiness.ars.usda...
As this shows, the cold zones dip down in the middle of the continent and the warmer zones follow the coasts (and also are influenced by proximity to the Great Lakes) so it's not solely a north versus south thing.
The Canadian hardiness zone system takes different criteria into account and the same area is often a number different, for example I'm USDA Zone 4 but Canadian Zone 5. That can be a bit of a problem in Canada when one doesn't know which system is being used, such as for plant sales. That's why we often specify which we are using in Canada - and use the USDA zone equivalent when posting on primarily American forums.
Regarding the original question, it would be helpful to know what space and resources are available. I had to move a lot of daylilies, but only from one place in the garden to another because of building construction. I dug up the clumps, divided off a smaller piece of each cultivar and replanted it, and gave the bulk of them away. That would also work when moving. You can jam the smaller pieces into a container of soilless potting mix and hold them that way for quite some time. If they then need to be bareroot to move it should be easy to shake off the mix and pack them.
For a shorter time frame, when I had to temporarily remove some I dug up the clumps and left the soil on the rootball, put the plants in plastic shopping bags and set them in the shade. I'd water them occasionally. They were fine for several weeks until they could return to their original homes.
So there are various possibilities but again it kind of depends on the space and resources available, how they will be transported etc. (I know someone who did a long distance move with daylilies and mailed the plants a few at a time to the destination ahead of her, but that requires having someone knowledgeable at the other end).
