Hemerocallis: The Daylily

Written by an experienced and respected name in Daylily culture, this is not surprisingly a most informative publication. It covers the Species of Daylilies as well as the cultivars, tracing their history from the early 1900s through to today and on into the future.

The largest section of the book considers “Some Worthy Daylilies of Today and Tomorrow”; an illustrated catalogue of modern cultivars listed according to colour. There are also chapters on Hybridising, Landscaping with Daylilies, Horticultural Requirements and Judging the Daylily among others.

Over 200 colour photographs illustrate mostly individual cultivars but also their use in landscaping. It is a well produced book; however its general page layout is rather pedestrian and not particularly inspiring.

The book does concentrate on Munson’s own introductions, and it seems that a large proportion of the cultivars illustrated are his. But with this book now nearly twenty years old, and with hundreds of new cultivars registered each year, the 900 or so included here are inevitably only a small proportion of the total.

At the time of its publication in 1989, when I first obtained a copy of Munson’s monograph, it seemed almost the last word Daylily literature; while still a valuable book it now looks dated, especially alongside the more recent “Color Encyclopedia of Daylilies” (sic) by Petit and Peat. ( )