Family Liliaceae (Lily Family).
With the division of the Lily Family into many different families and even orders, modern botanists place Hemerocallis in the family Asphodelaceae in the order Asparagales.
This favorite garden perennial has naturalized itself quite successfully in western Pennsylvania, and huge colonies light up our roadsides in June. Countless variations have been bred for connoisseurs, but nothing matches the simple elegance of the original species. This stand grew at the edge of an overgrown thicket in an old cemetery in Beechview, where it was blooming in late June.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
HEMEROCALLIS L. DAY LILY. Perianth funnel-form,
lily-like; the short tube inclosing the ovary, the
spreading limb 6-parted; the 6 stamens inserted on its
throat. Anthers as in Lilium, but introrse.
Filaments and style long and thread-like, declined and
ascending; stigma simple. Capsule (at first rather
fleshy) 3-angled, loculicidally 3-valved, with several
black spherical seeds in each cell. Showy perennials,
with fleshy-flbrous roots; the long and linear keeled
leaves 2-ranked at the base of the tall scapes, which
bear at the summit several bracted and large flowers;
these collapse and decay after expanding for a single
day (whence the name, from hemera, a day,
and kallos, beauty.)
H. fulva L. (COMMON D.) Inner divisions (petals) of the tawny orange perianth wavy and obtuse. Roadsides, escaped from gardens. (Introd. from Eu.)
