“THE DEAR OLD LEMON LILY” 
Hemerocallis flava growing in untrammeled loveliness near the brook which runs through 
Mrs. Edith Wharton’s garden at Lenox (Mass.); in the foreground are Forget-me-nots 
THE ALLURE OF THE DAY-LILY 
ANNE HIGGINSON SPICER 
Favorites of Past Days that Enliven Modern Gardens from Early May till Mid-August 
TS^SST IS my eye for bargains that is really responsible for 
my interest in Hemerocallis. Of course my garden 
had fine clumps of the dear old Lemon Lily (H. flava), 
ifUSSsI yellow flowered and fragrant offshoots from originals 
in my father’s and grandmother’s gardens. Nevertheless, it 
took the liquid alliteration of the sign in the back of an absurd 
little plant catalogue, “six late Lemon Lilies for twenty-five 
cents,” to arouse me. The preceding summer I had seen H. 
Florham in Mrs. Francis King’s garden at Alma, and I had a 
hope that this enchantingly cheap offer might be the beginning 
of a stock of the same plant in my garden. 
When the order came it resembled nothing quite so much 
as six little tufts of pestilential Crab-grass, but I planted the 
clusters glumly, saying to myself that time and the quarter had 
been thrown away. 
On the fifteenth of May the following spring 1 changed my 
mind, for the tiny clumps solemnly and prolifically proceeded 
to push out a number of strong stems about six inches in height, 
and from these stems budded forth clusters of rich dull orange 
“ Lilies,” the backs of their perianths a rusty brown. Cheerful, 
fragrant, and free-blooming they were, but neither “lemon” 
nor “late”! Yet they were so admired, and such willing per¬ 
formers that I decided then and there not to stop till 1 had 
planted every sort of Hemerocallis that the dealers had to offer. 
This all happened several years ago. The result is that in 
the summer of 1922 I had an unbroken succession of Day-lilies 
from about the sixth of May until the sixth of August and hope 
this present summer to carry on the bloom through still more 
of the season. 
F OR the semi-shady garden, such as mine, there is no more 
delightful plant. In an experience of twenty-one years 
1 have never known flava to be attacked by any insect pest, 
although a wandering rabbit may bite off the flower-buds now 
