I was just reading this old post being 'Highland Lord' was the daylily of the day.
"Posted by chalyse (Where the desert meets the sea. - Zone 9b) on Jul 24, 2014 12:03 AM
In Zone 9b (Local Temps = Min 25/Max 108)
Vigor and Flower: Highland Lord started out as a healthy plant years ago in our gardens, but gradually lost vigor and dwindled down, along with other long, narrower-leaf daylilies that consistently under-perform in summer temps above 90-100 in our zone 9b. It did not increase over three years. Just not enough vigor in the leaves to support more gain than loss, and not an appropriate cultivar for use in a drought tolerant hybridization program."
Plus I also remember some posts by some here (myself included) saying that for us 'Crimson Pirate' was a narrow leafed plant. But others replied that for them they saw no difference, that in their garden 'Crimson Pirate' had "normal width" leaves.
So I am wondering if others have noticed that 'Highland Lord' seems to have narrow leaves in their garden (I will check mine tomorrow).
Also I would like to hear from people in hot zones, say 9-11? Has anyone noticed narrow leafed daylilies not doing well in the heat?

Thus far, "Crimson Pirate" is somewhat narrow-normal leaf here in 9a and has multiplied like crazy.
"Gus Townsend" also with narrower leaves here is lagging.

I don't think width of leaves has much to do with whether a daylily has vigor or not.

Naturally, if a cultivar has narrow leaves, desert or drought-like conditions (as the op quoted) will affect it sooner than a daylily with more leaf surface, but that is cultural.

I had Highland Lord (Munson-R.W., 1983). It performed poorly here and eventually it died.

I live in an area where at 8AM in the summer, it is regularly 95-98 degrees. A good third of my 750+ cultivars are narrow-leaved diploid spiders, ufs, and round forms. I can honestly say that the majority out-perform most of the wide-leafed tets I grow.

I don't believe that having narrow leaves means that a daylily will (or will not) do well in a hot climate. What I have noticed though, is that more of my narrow-leafed seedlings seem to be more rust resistant than wide leaf seedlings. Rust resistance ratio of narrow vs. wide leaf seedlings is much higher.

I can't check my 'Highland Lord's leaf width at this time of year unless I do it with dead foliage but right now it's dark outside. On the bright side, at least the dead foliage should be visible since there's no snow on the ground - yet (it's actually raining this morning).

But, for plants in general, those with narrower leaves are typically more heat, drought, sun tolerant than plants with wider leaves (less transpiration and less surface area to get over-heated by sun).

Becky, perhaps a wider leaf seedling may have more stomata and therefore more entry points for rust. There'd also be more surface area on a wide leaf for spores to land on. In some other plants with similar architecture I seem to recall that upright leaves are less susceptible than more arching ones because it is harder for spores to settle on something vertical as opposed to horizontal. Have you noticed anything like that?

Sue - I have humidity here, so I don't know if a vertical leaf would make any difference. Rust fungus spores would probably land on upright leaves fairly easily, IMO. The moisture on both the top and bottom of BOTH vertical and horizontal leaves with any breeze would probably allow rust spores to stick any daylily plant.

I think your summation of more area on the wider leaves to become infected is one point, but I almost wonder if there is something else about narrow leaves that make them less susceptible to rust (or much more rust resistant)?

Are there any narrow leafed cultivars out there that are highly susceptible to rust? I would be interested to know.

beckygardener said:

Are there any narrow leafed cultivars out there that are highly susceptible to rust? I would be interested to know.

In Asia many of the species daylilies are highly susceptible, I would think most of those are narrow-leaved - also the plant I believe to be Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus here is (I used selfed seedlings of it to keep rust going through winter indoors because they are very susceptible). The "ground zero" plant for daylily rust is 'Pardon Me' which would be narrow-leaved.

Here's a pic of an infected species daylily in Japan:
http://web.ncf.ca/ah748/longit...

Do you see a difference in leaf width between foliage habits or ploidy?

Humm...maybe we should establish the measurement of a narrow leaf compared to a "normal" or wide leaf? Anyone have any stats for that?

There are measurements for species, such as here:

http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/c...

I can't off the top of my head think of anywhere this is listed for cultivars, unless maybe old ones in Stout's book, I will have a look. But, in theory at least, the measurements may vary between gardens also depending on nutrition, irrigation, climate, positioning in sun versus shade, leaf age etc. Measurements would also have to be of a flattened leaf to remove the folding effect.

Edit: Just skimmed Stout's book and didn't see anything for cultivars. He may have commented on leaf width for species but I'll need to search for that in the digital version later, really must get the stuffing for Christmas dinner made and frozen this morning instead of geting diverted by more interesting endeavours!

Stout mentioned the cultivar 'Gracilis' as having narrow leaves in his book. There are a couple of mentions of species having narrow or wide leaves but in most of these it was in relation to height, and that's a ratio that would be a factor - you wouldn't expect a small, short daylily to have wide leaves compared to a taller one necessarily. There was one where he mentioned leaves being almost an inch across which he considered "coarse" for the height of the plant.

If we go with "coarse" equating to wide, he considered Hemerocallis citrina to have "coarse" foliage and the fulvous daylilies to have "medium coarse" foliage. Hemerocallis dumortierii is the one that he considered to have "coarse" foliage for the height of the plant, leaves an inch wide. The cultivar 'Mikado' he considered "medium coarse". 'Nocerensis' is described as having coarse foliage but scapes 4 feet tall. 'Margaret Perry' he considered to have coarse foliage and 'Soudan' medium coarse.

If anyone else wants to search the book, the pinched nerve in my shoulder is starting to protest so I'm stopping for now, it's online here:

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cg...

The rain let up some, to just a sprinkle, so I went out and measured the leaf width of 'Highland Lord',
I tried to measure at the widest point with the leaf pressed down flat. It was 21mm., it is still a young plant so I expect it to continue to enlarge the width of the leaves. I looked around at the other plants near by just to compare differences and the widest leaves appeared to be around 30 mm., and still the narrowest for me was on some of my 'Crimson Pirate' plants at only 5 mm. I did also measure a few plants with their leaves around 13-15 mm. So in my garden I don't expect 'Highland Lord' to have particularly narrow leaves.
These are mostly still young plants, even the 30mm. width was on a young seedling. The Crimson Pirate also appears to be very young, I remember transplanting this one in the spring, but it is spreading and putting out new fans. So I really did not learn much from my measuring, I think it would be much more meaningful if all the plants were at least three years old.
There was still a lot of leftover rusty looking leaves and other yellow and dying leaves on almost every plant. I did notice one standout plant with beautiful dark foliage with not a sign of any type of yellow leaf and that was 'Primal Scream', it looked fantastic.
This is one of my 'Crimson Pirate' plants with the narrow leaves, I have several of these...the plant multiples fast. The heavy rains recently has it beaten down.

'Crimson Pirate' is a dormant dip whereas 'Highland Lord' is a semi-ev tet. Wouldn't tets in general tend to have larger foliage than dips? Foliage habit may also be relevant if the original evergreens, H, aurantiaca or aurantiaca 'Major', had wide leaves. I may have that latter information somewhere and will try and find it. @admmad is it likely that two traits like that would still go together after all this time? But that's also a question you might look at where there is still green foliage to measure.

Dr. Plodeck discusses the origin of narrow daylily leaves here:

http://www.hemerocallis-europa...

" While most of the cultivars as well as of the species have leaves with a diameter of 1-5cm, there are also some cultivars with grass-like leaves, which are normally also of lower habit."
What is "diameter" suppose to be ?

Diameter would be the distance from one side to the other side, i.e. the width of the leaves. According to a couple of dictionaries it doesn't have to be a circle: http://www.merriam-webster.com...

I have never heard of anything other than a circle having a diameter!

Yes, it is possible that the two traits could still be linked (assuming that they are not two aspects of the same trait in which case they would always be linked).

Two characteristics that are correlated by "accident", chance or serendipity will remain correlated unless there is active selection that breaks the correlation.

I am going to use the traditional daylily belief that evergreens are winter tender and dormants are winter hardy as an example.

Suppose that the evergreen species Hemerocallis aurantiaca var major (or more appropriately H. major) was tender and the original dormant species were hardy. That would be an original 100% correlation. It is likely that correlation would be less than 100% in the F1 between evergreen and dormant species. It might be even less or approximately the same in the F2. After the F2 generation the correlation would not change unless plants were actively selected to change the correlation.

Growing and hybridizing with evergreens in the north where winter conditions could damage or kill evergreens and not using those plants as parents would select for hardy evergreens and change the correlation. However, hybridizing in locations were selection could not occur against winter tender plants would not change the correlation. If natural selection acted negatively on winter-tender plants in other ways that affected their use as parents in locations that did not have severe winters then that could change the correlation.

Tets in general would have larger foliage than diploids. To be more accurate, the tetraploid version of a diploid plant would on average have wider foliage. However, if hybridizers considered tetraploid foliage that was too wide as "coarse" it could have been selected to be narrower and more similar to the width of diploid foliage.

Thank you Maurice. So far the only thing I've found regarding these original evergreens is that H. aurantiaca had "medium coarse" foliage according to Stout, at least the plant he had under that name. That seems to imply that the wide foliage didn't come from that evergreen, but if not I wonder where it did come from.

BTW, as an aside, apparently the Catalogue of LIfe is the authority used for plant names on ATP and it has both H. aurantiaca var. major and H. major as synonyms of H. fulva var. aurantiaca, citing Hotta for both of the latter two:

http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

Larry, I understood diameter as across a circle and just thought it was a language thing since the author's first language is not English. So I learned something today too when I actually looked it up!

BTW, as an aside, apparently the Catalogue of LIfe is the authority used for plant names on ATP and it has both H. aurantiaca var. major and H. major as synonyms of H. fulva var. aurantiaca, citing Hotta for both of the latter two

In 1988 Hotta described/redefined, as two separate entities Hemerocallis fulva var aurantiaca and H. major. The paper is otherwise in Japanese so I cannot determine what the rationale was but it references a 1985 paper. In the 1985 paper the plants that are later defined as H. major are described thusly,

"The Hemerocallis population on the Danjo Islands is characterized by a
peculiar combination of characters, such as the non-stoloniferous compact rhizomes, the
evergreen leaves, the early flowering season, and the large orange yellow flowers without a V-shaped
color pattern on the inner tepals. This population seems to be well adapted to the
warmer winter season of these islands and probably populated them during glacial and post
glacial periods. In flower color and in the non-stoloniferous rhizomes, this species is
morphologically very close to the continental species H. hakuunensis, but it differs from the
latter by its larger flowers with fringed tepaIs and the evergreen habit."

A personal communication to me from Dr. K. Nitta who collected both H. fulva var aurantiaca and H. major and grew them in the their university farm noted that although aurantiaca was not strongly evergreen during winter major was.

So, regrettably, I do not agree with the Catalogue of Life as H. major clearly does not resemble H. fulva enough. I have far more confidence in the biologists who have much greater experience collecting and examining many plants from natural daylily populations.

I just read this the other day, and it seems to apply here.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/2...

Maurice, there are other Hemerocallis placements in the CoL which I find problematic as well, for example why are there separate entries under H. fulva and H. fulva var. fulva. Wouldn't those actually be the same?

Larry, as a Brit originally and now a Canadian, here communicating mostly with Americans, I'm in a permanent state of language confusion in any case.......