Didn't get to the mailbox yesterday while browsing the estate, so today I found one of my daylilies had been backed over. Could have happen 1-4 days ago. The fans are wilted so thinking it didn't happen today. I am crushed it had just come into it's own about 13 fans & I was expecting lots of flowers this year. Anyhow all of the fans were broken off along with some daffodils and iris. I dug and the strangest thing I really couldn't find a lot of roots Thought I would find the crown & maybe could save. Has anyone ever had this happen and did anything ever come back up. If I put the fans in soil will they develop roots? (Wishful thinking). Only saving grace is my friend has it & I am sure she will give me another piece, but it took 3 yrs to get to this nice size so if you have some miracle I am listening

Despite what most people will tell you, daylilies CAN come back from roots. I would plant them in a container and water frequently with a mix of seaweed solution and SuperThrive. (You could also do this with them planted in the ground, but having them in a container would keep the solution around the roots instead of seeping into the surrounding soil.)

That said, I would think that your clump would come back naturally; there must be crowns in there for there to be fans.

It may be that the clump was not run over---rather, it was eaten by voles (field mice that travel in mole tunnels. I have had this happen many times---mainly to hostas. Voles dearly LOVE hostas and will pass up other plants to munch on their roots/crowns.

If there is some crown left on the fans, they will form new roots.

for all the suggestions. It wasn't voles unless they drive. We have had a lot of rain so the idiot left a track almost wiped out my new mailbox. Haven't had it in more than a week & a half. The voles might have been nibbling before or after the mushing that could explain the lack of roots
I will get SuperThrive & I did put some of the fans back in the ground in another spot I know at least one had a little piece of root on it.

DaylilyDazzled said:
I will get SuperThrive & I did put some of the fans back in the ground in another spot I know at least one had a little piece of root on it.

I've also soaked fans that have broken off in a glass of seaweed/SuperThrive solution, and they've developed enough roots to be re-planted. Exactly like a cutting.

mystlw said:Despite what most people will tell you, daylilies CAN come back from roots.

They can come back from crowns or rhizomes. Rhizomes can look like roots and be mistaken for them, but daylilies do not regrow from true roots unless the root has at least a piece of crown attached..

Are the rhizomes the fat ones verses the long skinnier ones. Think I will try to put a couple in that solution. I have nothing to lose at the moment.

No, the fat ones are tuberous roots. A rhizome would look more like the skinnier ones but would feel and look woodier. I have pictures, I'll try and find one.

I found my images of rhizomes, these are old so low resolution.

The first one shows a daylily with a rhizome growing sideways:


The next one shows the rhizome removed, and then how much it developed in just over a week from planting in potting mix.


This one shows a new fan developing from another rhizome


A rhizome has a kind of knobbly, jointed appearance compared with a root.

In some daylilies such as Hemerocallis fulva 'Europa', new plants can pop up from rhizomes quite a distance from the mother plant.

Fascinating, Sue!

Thanks Sue I will look & see if I can find any.
I have kwanso & I think that is what is happening with it. I have 4 new fans up to 18" away from it that I didn't plant. Waiting for flowers to be sure then moving all to a bed that it can do what it wants, because there are no daylilies I care about & hosta that can take care of itself.

sooby said:

They can come back from crowns or rhizomes. Rhizomes can look like roots and be mistaken for them, but daylilies do not regrow from true roots unless the root has at least a piece of crown attached..

Those of us who have grown daylilies from roots prefer not to have this argument with those who don't believe that it's possible. But I grew my first fan from a root when a hybridizer picked up a root (not a rhizome, not a crown), handed it to me, and told me to go home and pot it up. It did indeed grow into a fan, and I've done it several times since.

@mystlw,
Do you know the names of those varieties that you have grown new fans from roots? I find that very interesting being I have always thought a piece of the crown would be necessary. Is it possible a small piece of the crown was still attached?

Or perhaps Terry could enlighten us with a pictorial demonstration, like mine above with a rhizome?

Growing a daylily from a piece of a root is possible. It is called tissue culture or micropropagation. The root would have to have been treated with chemicals that force normal root cells to stop developing normally and become a shoot meristem. That is abnormal development forced by the chemical compounds, e.g. BAP and other plant hormones. A fan of leaves will not develop unless there is a shoot apical meristem. Pieces of roots do not have shoot apical meristems. Roots do not have shoot apical meristems. The daylily crown does have them. Rhizomes have axillary meristems that can become shoot apical meristems when the rhizome is detached from the crown or when the length of the rhizome is such that its axillary meristems are no longer suppressed by the crown. A crown also has axillary meristems that can develop into shoot apical meristems without any chemical help.

For those who think that it is possible to grow a daylily fan from a normal piece of root, here is one test. Take a simple, long fleshy root that is still attached to the crown. Photograph it. Post the photograph here. Cut it about two inches away from the crown and then plant that piece without the crown. Try this with say ten pieces of root and let us know how many daylilies develop. A valid test of the idea that a root can develop a new fan requires that no part of that piece of root was ever directly attached to a crown or a rhizome because even a very small section of a crown or a very small section of a rhizome may have an axillary meristem that can develop into a shoot apical meristem.

Seedfork said:@mystlw,
Do you know the names of those varieties that you have grown new fans from roots? I find that very interesting being I have always thought a piece of the crown would be necessary. Is it possible a small piece of the crown was still attached?

I don't know what that particular daylily was, as it came from an order before mine. (He and his wife said that a woman earlier had bought a LOT of pretty expensive ones, so that root was likely from a pretty great daylily.) I do remember that last year I grew a fan from a Give Me Eight root.
Here's my problem: it has never worked when I've tried it in Spring. When I try in July or later, it works about half the time. I have no idea why that is. But it doesn't allow my fans to grow large enough to survive an Ohio winter, unless I have a clump that I can plant it with -- and even then I don't know if one of the returning fans is THAT fan.
I have also never tried it without the seaweed/SuperThrive solution that I use on pretty much everything.

sooby said:Or perhaps Terry could enlighten us with a pictorial demonstration, like mine above with a rhizome?

Interestingly, it has never occurred to me to take a photo series of something that I'm just playing around with in my backyard. I'm not a hybridizer, I don't sell my daylilies (though I've made some trades), I'm not trying to make money off of this claim, and there is really no reason for me to make something like this up.
Believe me, don't believe me, doesn't make a difference.

And I apologize to the original poster for this thread veering so far off course.

No apologies necessary I am finding very interesting. Always fun to learn new things and theories.

Another way of looking at this is that when we dig a daylily to move it, divide it or whatever, if they were able to regenerate from pieces of root (that do not have a small amount of crown or rhizome attached), there would be baby daylilies popping up around just about every hole we dig, because there are pretty much always some broken roots left behind (in normal garden soil that is). Also when the crown is winter-killed but the roots are still intact, that daylily does not come back from the roots.