Wild edibles: the daylily, a year-round food plant

Some wild plants are deadly. Eat nothing you have not positively identified, with a reliable field guide or an experienced forager to confirm it.

The orange daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) came to North America as a garden plant and has spread along roadsides, ditches, old farmsteads and the edges of yards across much of the United States. It is so common that most people stop seeing it. Few realize that its tubers, shoots, buds and flowers are all food, and that between them they cover the whole year.

How to identify daylilies

You need to be certain before eating any wild plant. In flower, the daylily is distinctive and hard to mistake. Out of flower, a patch of green leaves can look like many things. Confirm all four of these features:

• Upward-facing flowers with six petals. The wild type is a tawny orange with no spots, trumpet-shaped and up to about 5 inches across. Each bloom lasts one day, which is where the name comes from. Garden hybrids come in many other colors.
• A bare flower stalk. The stalk that holds the flowers has no leaves on it and stands about 3 feet tall, sometimes more. This separates the daylily from the poisonous blue flag iris and from true lilies such as the tiger lily, whose flower stalks carry leaves. The tiger lily’s flowers are also spotted and hang downward.
• Long, arching basal leaves. Bright green and strap- or sword-shaped with pointed tips, they grow from the ground in a fan and reach 1 to 3 feet.
• A root mass of small tubers. Dig one plant and you find a tangle of roots swollen into tubers ranging from pea size to about the size of a large almond.

When all four check out, you are looking at a daylily.

How to eat a daylily

Eating through the seasons

The tubers can be dug any time the ground is workable and are best from late fall through early spring. In spring, the young shoots are tender and good stir-fried. In summer come the unopened flower buds and then the flowers themselves.

For a first harvest, wait until summer, when the flowers, bare stalks, leaves and tubers are all present for a sure identification. Daylilies are perennial, so the same patch will be there the following spring for shoots.

Spring shoots need extra care. They come up at the same time as poisonous irises, true lilies and other bulbs such as daffodils, and young leaves look alike. The reliable check is underground. Dig up a shoot, roots and all, and look for the cluster of small, potato-like tubers with fine roots attached. A single thick rhizome with no tubers, or a single onion-like bulb, means it is not a daylily.

Which parts to eat

The edible parts are the tubers, the young shoots, the flower buds and the flowers. Cook them. Some people react to daylily with nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, especially after eating a lot of it raw, and cooking is reported to reduce the problem. Try a small portion the first time and wait a day before eating more. Buds are good steamed or sautéed, rather like green beans, and the tubers can be boiled or roasted like small potatoes. Dried daylily flowers are a traditional ingredient in Chinese cooking, where they are soaked and cooked before eating.

Nutrition

The flower buds and flowers are reported to be a source of beta-carotene and vitamin C, and the tubers are starchy. Treat daylily as a supplement to other food rather than a staple.

Other notes

Researchers in China have reported potentially toxic compounds in the roots of some daylily species, and there are concerns that they may build up with repeated eating. The plant has a long history as food, but the tubers in particular are best eaten in moderation and not every day.

Pick only from patches you know have not been sprayed, and not along busy roads. Daylilies are toxic to cats, as true lilies are, so keep cut flowers and trimmings where cats cannot reach them.