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I took these Day Lily pictures on 06/13/2011 on a morning visit to our pool area. Though it has many common names, Tiger Lily is the one I grew up with on the east coast. It is considered an old-fashioned perennial that isn’t sold much any more, even though it is a very long-lived plant. Unfortunately they don’t seem to be as abundant in number as they were when we first moved in here. Some of the Mexican landscapers we’ve had over the past several years, lacking in knowledge as to what is and what isn’t a flower, or weed, once the flowers have gone by, have either over pruned them or ripped them out thinking they were just weeds.
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| DESCRIPTION: The Orange Day Lily (Hemerocallis fulva) of the Lily family (Liliaceae) is a perennial plant with a rosette of basal leaves and flowering stalks about 3-6' tall. The basal leaves are hairless and linear with parallel venation, tapering gradually to a sword-like point and have a tendency to bend outward and down around the middle - presenting a somewhat floppy appearance. Rising from the center of the rosette, much taller than the leaves, several tall, very stout flowering stalks. Each stalk is hairless and largely naked, except for a few green bracts along its length. It is largely unbranched, except near the apex, where there is panicle consisting of a few small clusters of flowers. The flowers are quite large and are a bright yellowish-orange color. |
| The flowers, spanning individually about 3-4 inches across, are held semi-erect or horizontally on the their stalks, rather than hanging downward. Each flower consists of 6 orange tepals (3 petals and 3 sepals that are similar in appearance) that are united at the base, but spread outward and backward toward their tips. The 3 inner tepals are somewhat broader than the 3 outer tepals. The margins of each tepal are rolled. The throat of the flower is yellow, around which there is a band of red, while the remainder of the flower is some shade of orange. Exerted from its center, there are 6 long stamens and a single style. The buds of the flowers are green to greenish orange, oblong, and up to 3" long. The blooming period occurs during mid-summer and lasts about a month. Each flower lasts only a single day, hence the common name. |  |
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