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.
