Orange day-lily

Distribution

Orange daylily is native to Asia from the Caucasus east through the Himalaya to China, Japan, and Korea. Orange daylily persists where planted, making them a very good garden plant.

"Hemerocallis fulva" var. "fulva" has escaped from cultivation across much of the United States and parts of Canada and has become a weedy or invasive species. It persists also where dumped and spreads more or less rapidly by vegetative increase into woods and fields and along roadsides and ditches, hence the common name ditch lily. It forms dense stands that exclude native vegetation, and is often so common that it is mistaken for a native species.

Behavior

It is an herbaceous perennial plant growing from tuberous roots, with stems 40–150 cm tall. The leaves are linear, 50–90 cm long and 1–2.8 cm broad. The flowers are 5–12 cm across, orange-red, with a pale central line on each tepal; they are produced from early summer through late autumn on scapes of ten through twenty flowers, with the individual flowers' opening successively, each one only lasting one day. The fruit is a three-valved capsule 2–2.5 cm long and 1.2–1.5 cm broad which splits open at maturity to release the seeds.

Both diploid and triploid forms are known in the wild, but most cultivated plants are tetraploids which easily produce seeds and can also reproduce vegetatively by stolons or division. At least four botanical varieties are recognized, including the typical triploid var. "fulva", the diploid, long-flowered var. "angustifolia", the triploid var. "kwanzo", where the stamens are modified into additional petals, and the evergreen var. "aurantiaca".