Unidetified perennial

[Alice]

Can anyone give me a name for the yellow flowers. They are one of the few flowers that were in the garden when we bought the place 20 years ago. Photo taken today so flowering now. They are similar to haemorocalis but the flowers last for weeks. They are scented. I think they grow off a bulb ( my husband says a root and he's probably right.!) Will dig a bit up when they go past and check. Can't find them in any gardening book so if anybody knows please help

[Bugeyes]

Don't know what the plant is but your garden looks fab! Builders in our garden at the moment so who knows what will be left at the end of it.....

[Alice]

Thank you Bug Eyes. If you want to see more pics if you look at previous posts there are some there. In relation to the builders if my experience is anything to go by what you'll have is rubble, chip pokes, coke cans, cig buts and dirty coffee mugs all round the place. There's no way to persuade them that your house and garden is not a building site. But hopefully they will do a god job for you and you can clean it all up when they've gone.

[Jaxom]

Alice I belive they are daylilies or Hemerocallis . here is a link for a photo. http://www.visi.com/~howie/garden/daylily,-bloom.html

[Alice]

Hello Jaxom, thanks for that but they are not haemorocalis. I have them in my garden. The day lillies flower much later in the year and each flower lasts about a day and is replaced by a new flower. These yellow ones are flowering now and each flower lasts for weeks. I have never seen them in anyone elses garden. I think they are a very old variety of something (as I said we inherited them with the place 20 odd years ago and I can assure you there was nothing modern here. Nothing had been disturbed since the Coronation) Just hope somebodies Granny had them in their garden and can provide a name. I have tried all my gardening books and nothing fits the bill. I will try to get a better close pic.

[JennieAtkinson]

Lovely flower Alice - and the garden looks great!

[sewer rat]

Hi Alice
If you can get a closer photo, I think I might be able to help - I drove past two gardens today who have what looks suspiciously like the same plant as yours growing in them. Will stop and ask the owners sometime this week.

[Alice]

Thanks Rat, that would be great. I'll take a close up tomorrow (in the rain) and get it posted.

[Alice]

Hello Rat, I hope this is a better pic of that unamed flower. It is like hemorocalis BUT it's flowering now, the flowers last for weeks and it's very scented. I've never seen it elsewhere and nobody who'se ever been in the garden knew what it was. Probably some old cottage garden thing that's gone out of fashion. Would be really grateful if you could come up with a name. Or maybe someone else whose granny had it knows the name.

[SueA]

Hi Alice, I still think they look like some form of Hemerocallis or lily. There are some chinese, korean & japanese forms of daylily which flower from early spring & have a succession of flowers lasting for weeks so maybe that is why you think each flower lasts longer than a day. There are some daylilies which are sterile & don't have ovaries so don't produce seed pods & flower for longer than a day also but they are usually double forms. I think yours look most like the Lemon Lily- Hemerocallis dumortieri- which has 2 to 4 fragrant yellow flowers on each stem with long narrow leaves & unbranched stems(slightly red tinted), or possibly Hemerocallis middendorffii which is similar.

[SueA]

Found an American site with pics. of some of the daylilies I mentioned but they have the Lemon Lily under another name.www.daylilygarden.com/origins/

[Alice]

Thanks for that SueA. I really appreciate it. I will check it out and let you know what I think.

[Alice]

Hello SueA, have checked out the link to the web site you so kindly gave me and I think you're probably right Some kind of hemerocallis, but who could say which one The flowers don't just come in succession but do last for several weeks. Anyway,I've got a name to pin on them and that seems to be important to the human condition Thanks again for the time you took to help me there.

[SueA]

Glad to help Alice, there do seem to be a lot of lemony ones which could be yours with all sorts of names like custard lily etc. but they seem to be older 'species' types rather than the modern hybrid ones we usually have in the garden which tend to look a bit different.

[Alice]

That's right SueA. I have hemorocalis in the garden (as we think of it) but these ones are quite different, flowering at a different time. I think you're right, an older species type. I've never seen them anywhere else and neither has any visitor to the garden. |But, hemerocalis is what they are now. (Maybe I'll just call them custard lillies. That sounds good.)Thanks again for your help.