DAY LILY 



DAY LILY 



Hemerocdllis fiilva. 



Hemerocallis, Greek, from hemera, day, and kallos, beauty — beauti- 

 ful for a day. 



A tall, robust, lily-like plant, which has escaped from cultivation 

 and borders roadsides and streams, flourishes in meadows and on 

 abandoned house sites. Native of Europe and Asia. Blooms from 

 June to September. 



Root. — Perennial, fleshy, fibrous. 



Leaves. — Linear, keeled, eighteen to twenty-four inches long. 



Flowers. — In loose corymbs of six to twelve at the summit of leafless 

 scapes three to five feet high; tawny-orange, opening for a day. 



Perianth. — Funnel-shaped, lily-like, the short tube enclosing the 

 ovary; the spreading limb six-parted; the sepaloid lobes narrower 

 than the petaloid lobes. 



Stamens. — Six inserted at the summit of the perianth tube; filaments 

 long and slender; stigma club-shaped. 



Capsule. — Three-celled, many-seeded. 



This plant is not misnamed; its flowers are beautiful and live 

 but for a day, yet as the succession is continuous the flowering 

 period is extended. The books call the blossom tawny-orange, 

 and as you look down into the cup you see a heart of dull yellow 

 which deepens at the point where the segments curve and lightens 

 again as the color runs to the tips. The result is dull orange on 

 a base of yellow. The sepaloid segments are readily distinguished 

 by shape as well as by position. The long orange filament bears 

 anthers heavily loaded with pollen and the style is a slender yellow 

 wand four inches long, extending far beyond the pollen zone. 

 Evidently cross-fertilization is desired. What is to be done, how- 

 ever, must be done quickly, for opening under the stimulus of the 

 rising sun the blossom dies with his departing rays; and the flower 

 erst so lovely becomes a mass of decay on the parent stem. These 

 tawny lovers of the sun live their own lives, freed both from the 

 protection and the domination of man. They gather at the road- 



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