Can I post a picture of what they look like?

It looks as though they are done blooming. Do you have a husband who goes wild with a string trimmer because it looks like something got into them and whacked away at them. If they were mine, I would curse a little and clean them up, pulling the dead foliage and scapes and cutting them back somewhat evenly. I would also pull all the grass if it's growing into them.

I only know my husband can be a hazard to my plants and even the metal tags when he gets it into his mind to go right into the borders to whack weeds

That brown stuff at the leaf bases is not unusual. It may be associated with earwigs, have you seen any?

We never weed whip and I forgot to say I have iris borer this year. So I may be a bit paronoid!

sooby said:That brown stuff at the leaf bases is not unusual. It may be associated with earwigs, have you seen any?

I have not seen earwigs.

@sooby some of my daylilies look like that. Especially the brown in the third picture. Leaf miners have hit me hard. I thought it was leaf miners hatching and eating in the bottom of the daylily. I have earwigs bad too,! You do not see them, but when you dig something or move it away, off they run. Do you think it could be a combo of both pests or just earwig damage? For my info, I would like to know to try and stop this.

Many blessings for your continued success!

Altheabyanothername said:@sooby some of my daylilies look like that. Especially the brown in the third picture. Leaf miners have hit me hard. I thought it was leaf miners hatching and eating in the bottom of the daylily. I have earwigs bad too,! You do not see them, but when you dig something or move it away, off they run. Do you think it could be a combo of both pests or just earwig damage? For my info, I would like to know to try and stop this.

I'm going out to dig them up now! I'll report back on earwigs and condition of the bulb

Sharon, I see the brown gunk here and have a ton of earwigs but no leafminers. Perhaps the brown stuff occurs anyway but since I always have earwigs I can't really tell. It's something that has been around since long before the leafminers arrived in North America several years ago.

Sue, I have leaf miners on just about every daylily at some time or another, but not that brown junk. I could not figure out why some daylilies would get that brown. I thought maybe the brown ones had more leaf miners I missed. Now I see that I am battling another pest, earwigs on those daylilies. That explains a lot.
This has been extremely helpful!

Many blessings for a wonderful week!

Earwigs are mostly nocturnal, as are a lot of other insects, such as cutworms, look for them a few hours after dark. Earwigs tend to congregate down low between the leaves during the day, depositing excrement, which provides a fertile environment for fungal and bacterial growth.

I get this discoloration on older leaves near ground level, and always thought of it as something that naturally occurs as leaves age and lose their resistance to disease. Watering or rainfall late in the day might exacerbate the problem.

Are you seeing this on a lot of your daylilies, or do certain cultivars seem to be worse?

I do not want to detract from FayeLynn' s question. But I would suggest to her to really look for earwigs, if she is not already. Her pictures look like some of my daylilies. I can tell on mine it is insect/pest damage. I just was looking for the wrong pest. I grow a very mixed garden and have daylilies in containers and in ground. I know I have a lot of earwigs around, mine are not sneaky. So in reality, I may have way more than I am aware of.

When I am cleaning for leaf miners, random daylily plants look like the above. I thought either I missed the leaf miners, it laid more eggs than normal, or some daylilies could not handle the leaf miner. Periodically some daylilies had so much brown but not much leaf miner damage. Others had leaf miner damage but no brown. But now everything matches what Sue said about earwigs. It is all coming together.

Ken-- I do think they prefer certain daylilies over others. That is because the damage amongst all daylilies appears random from either pest. But it might be where that daylily is environmentally located or what plants are around it.

Why don't they eat the weeds?
I had heard earwigs can eat nematodes which in Texas sand in an old cotton patch is a good thing. I hope that is not a myth. If there was a mind blowing emoji right now it would be my favorite.
Rosanna Rosanna Danna "It's a always something!"

May Everyone have a safe enjoyable week!

Thanks to everyone for the information. I need to clarify that only the first picture is of the plant in the ground. The rest of the pictures are of pulled leaves laying on the grass before I scooped them into the trash bag. I did dig up some roadside lily today, no scurrying of any type of insect ..... so I am going with the - normal - diagnoses .......
again thanks for the help, I'll be on the lookout for mites, earwigs etc in the future...
I do love pictures of pests if you have any to share...

FayeLynn said:
I do love pictures of pests if you have any to share...

There are pictures and information for the majority of daylily pests on the AHS site. The page on this link has a clickable list for each pest:

http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...