I don't even know how to describe this correctly. This Spring I ordered lots of daylilies. One cultivar was bizarre. Instead of a fan it was a single "stalk" for lack of a better word. I should have taken a picture but of course I didn't. I wasn't even sure it was a daylily. It reminded me of an ear of corn without the tassel but with the same diameter from top to bottom.

The outer "casing" turned brown so I started peeling it off. Underneath was green so every couple of days I tore more off. I now have this.




Has anyone seen this before? What is wrong with these fans? Should I do something to them to make them more normal? Here are close ups of each fan.




Help!

I would send the photos to the vendor and ask if they had seen this behavior with the cultivar.

It would indeed have been useful to see the "stalk". No way to know, I guess, if the vendor uses herbicides.

Sooby if you think about the part of the leek that you eat once you cut off the leaves that is what the fans looked like. But the top wasn't cut, it was rounded. The fans were a pale green color too. The roots looked normal so I planted them the same way I planted all my other ones.

Seedfork I never considered doing that since what they sent was so odd-looking I figured they must have seen it before.

As for pesticides, they can do that? I thought they'd just kill the plant. Does this mean you think the plant will die? The new leaves look healthy. They are just growing in a crazy way.

Yes herbicides can cause distorted growth without killing a plant. It doesn't have to have been actually used on the plant, it can be from spray drift. I'm not saying that's the cause but when you're trying to diagnose mystery plant ailments you start off considering all the things than might possibly cause the problem and then eliminate them one by one. When you get the plant from someone else the diagnostic process of elimination becomes more difficult. I agree with Larry, send the pictures to the vendor.

I'll try emailing the vendor.

I guess I'll find out about pesticides causing distorted growth because someone sprayed a ton of roundup the last couple of days to kill some vines. Some of it had to have drifted onto some daylilies and roses in my yard that were downwind. So far they look normal (as do the vines). I wonder how long it's going to take for me to see the damage? Most of them haven't bloomed yet. Will the flowers be mutated?