Viewing post #920235 by admmad

beckygardener said:How do daylilies do competing with other plant roots? I ask because I have some planted next to an Oak tree. A few of those have disappeared, too. I dug around in the dirt and found roots that I am sure belong to the tree. (sigh) Never enough ground space when you have trees! Some of my daylilies have a pretty massive root system, can those survive around other larger plants or will they eventually die off due to the competition?

It is difficult to separate root competition from competition for light. Are the daylilies that are planted next to the oak tree growing in its shade all day, for part of the day or not at all? Oak trees are described as having taproots but they also have roots that spread out in the soil so the oak tree could be competing with the daylilies both above and below ground. If the daylilies near the oak tree are being out-competed enough, so that they are dwindling with time, then even if they have massive root systems in time they will fail to survive - it just may take much longer for them to fail.

Can producing pods on a seedling eventually kill it? I am talking about a small seedling with a single fan. Does it tax the plant so much that it doesn't recover and eventually dies that same season?

We do not have any objective scientific information (that I know of) about the effect of producing seeds. I can speculate that a plant that flowers is capable of supporting the expected number of seeds that the number of its flowers would normally (naturally) produce. I can also speculate that if the plant was being taxed by its seed load that it would abort some or all of the seed pods. However, those are logical responses and it is possible that some plants do not respond with the most adaptive strategy.

How many of the daylily seeds that you plant germinate and produce a seedling above ground? How many of those seedlings then die? What happens to the seedlings that die - do they dwindle slowly, do their leaves die suddenly, etc?