Background history:

'Wispy Rays' is a evergreen introduced in 1998 by Joiner.

It has earned the following AHS awards:
Award of Merit: 2010
Honorable Mention: 2007

This plant can be found in our Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Wispy Rays') .

Please join in, if you own this plant! We would love to know more! I award an acorn for performance information posted to this thread.



Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Wispy Rays')

A large, showy bloom that never fails to attract attention in the garden. Even though 25 years old, this cultivar is still sought after. Perhaps this evergreen reaches registered height farther south, but here it is always below 30, and both height and bud count can vary with the prior winter/spring. Usually ample bud count (6-10) for this area. Generally reliable. Aaron Brown and Painted Demon are notable progeny here.

I planted Wispy Rays last April, 2022, which I received from Hemhaven. I did get a few great blooms this summer! WR bloomed from July 15-24, with 5 very nice blooms. By October it was at three somewhat rusty fans.

Although I never checked the height of this beauty in my garden, height be damned, look at those big showy blooms! This Evergreen has thrived and multiplied nicely in my garden...whew.

A very good one. Big and beautiful and grows great here in zone 6

It was big and beautiful and I love it but in 2021 we had a severe drought and I couldn't keep everything watered well. Wispy Rays had only 2 little tiny fans that came up last spring and they grew some through the summer but they were still pretty small heading into winter. Hopefully it will survive the winter and take off again in the spring.

This is the daylily that hooked me on daylilies and watermarks. I think this was the first daylily I saw with a watermark in person, but once I discovered them, it wasn't long before I knew lots of sources for them.

I'm happy to get 8-10 blooms per scape, although it is registered I think at 18. It seems happy here in my normally cold climate (knock on wood), depsite being an evergreen, although that might explain the bud count. The blooms are big and showy, as has been mentioned. But what a color blast when you get several of them blooming on a hot sunny day. It's like "oh yeah, Wispy Rays!".

Wispy Rays


I've used Wispy Rays in my crosses a few times, and find it to be a good parent, especially at passing on the water mark. Here are some examples. The first one is an oranger version of Wispy, and it's one of my favorites. It has that eye catching brightness and look that Wispy Rays has that makes you stop and enjoy for a while, even though it's in a seedling bed filled with interesting things to look at.


Explosion at the Paint Factory x Wispy Rays


Big Beautiful Babe x Wispy Rays 1

Big Beautiful Babe x Wispy Rays 2

Big Beautiful Babe x Wispy Rays 3

Love those seedlings Tim!

That first seedling of Tim's is gorgeous.

A very beautiful flower, certainly garners attention when in bloom. It arrived here in fall of 2018 and the plant has never grown very tall, but probably because of the location where it is planted. No matter, the flowers make it worthwhile, and in 2022 was in bloom for about a month. The color combinations of the petals, watermark and throat really make it stand out.

coming real soon now to my garden

I had this one briefly. Received it in the spring, it put out a few beautiful blooms, came back weaker the next spring and died before it bloomed again. I thought maybe because it is evergreen, but I see many people growing it in colder areas than me. I never tried replacing it since I had another similar color one, although I really did like this one.

Wispy Rays is a beautiful flower, when it blooms beautifully. The problem is that it is a true EVR which means that when we have a mild Winter here---it does great! However, when the Winter is bad---especially COLD, it does not do well. It has survived over the ten or more years I have had it here, but it has performed well only three times that I can recall. It may also be an erratic performer because Yes, it does get rust easily---and the rust really saps it's strength. I still keep it, but I'm not sure why.

2023 update…a bad year for Wispy Rays. It bloomed from July 6-12, with only three blooms. It ended the season with the same three fans as last year. Not a happy camper.

2024 update

A much better season for WR…we did have a very mild winter… it put on a fan over the Winter to start with 4. Then it bloomed from June 30 to August 3 with at least 21 flowers. By October, it was up to 7 fans! Let's see what happens this winter.




My friend helping me deadhead