Thanks Nancy! I appreciate the advice, I figured I’d start with cheap ones in bulk to see if I could keep them alive and if they matched my garden aesthetic, they ended up equaling about $1 per lily lol. I’ll be sure to keep in mind better nurseries though. Wow I had no idea so many types existed! Hm, this throws a wrench in my cataloguing plans lol, I’ll just make up names for them ;)

Kali -- depending on where in Central MA you are, I'd be most happy to share some of my excess daylilies with you if you would agree to come and dig! I'm just west of Worcester near Auburn. Have quite a number of daylilies that really could stand division/sharing... =)

Hi Roxanna - I live south of Worcester! I actually travel west to go to work :)

Kali -- so how can we email each other for possible meet? Is there a way to do this thru this forum?

Roxanna- hm it seems you have your privacy settings set so that you can’t receive messages. I think if you click on my profile you should be able to send me one though :)

Kali -- I just sent you a message. Hope to hear from you!

Just another thought.......when you buy packaged daylilies like shown above from big box stores, the varieties they show on the package maybe true pictures of the original daylily variety. Will yours look like that ? Maybe, however , most times these daylilies are tissue culture daylilies (grown in a test tube environment so a grower can produce lots of them quickly ) and most do not perform like the original plants i.e. maybe shorter or the blooms may be distorted or color may differ somewhat or plant just does not grow well . The only real way to get one that is not tissue cultured is to buy from a reputable grower and get a true clone from the mother plant .

Wow Nancy, thank you so much for that lily auction site. I am new to daylilies as well and am trying to differentiate between the climates they tend to thrive in.

Hi Brad Edwards, Not sure what you mean by climate. Daylilies grow as far south as Florida in the USA many of those are evergreen and semi evergreen ,and as far North as Hudson's Bay in Canada those are usually Dormant daylilies but many evergreen and semi evergreen will do well here too.

They grow from the west coast to the east . They grow in Italy, England, France Holland ......the list goes on and on and they originated in China . It is probably best for best performance to purchase daylilies from growers in your own surrounding area , you will be pretty much guaranteed that they will do well. That being said some plants from very far south do well in the North and vice versa. I grow daylilies in my zone 6a gardens that were hybridized in Zone 4 all the way up to Zone 9. Hope this is of some help

Thanks signet. I have gotten a couple of different varieties from the local master gardener plant sale that have done well. I just see so many daylilies now at the garden centers both big box and local that don't seem to have the vigor of many of the older varities. I always assumed it was because they have to adjust to the climate. I mean if you take a daylily that thrives in Wisconsin and has been there for 80 years and put it down in Alabama I would think it wouldn't do well. The daylily auction site is really cool but I have a hard time justifiying spending hundreds of dollars on varieties I think look amazing when they grow out so slow. I have some yellow edible daylillies I am going to propagate myself by scales as I have done that before with success. I just wish there was more info online about varieties that excel in certain areas because there are so many hybrids out now.

Brad if you are propagating by scales, then you and I are not talking daylilies . You are talking about lilies , a completely different animal.

Daylilies are plants with fiberous roots and are either propagated by seed or division ( the big box store daylilies are usually tissue culture and tissue cultured plants are frowned upon by the true daylily afficienado because the plant does not perform as well as a true clone) .

Lilies are bulbs ( and can be propogated by scales)

So you need to determine if you are asking about daylilies or lilies.

What zone are you in ? Once I know that I can steer you in the direction of daylily growers that will have plants that will do well in your zone .