Hemerocallis

Hemerocallis fulva. http://www.northgeorgiadaylilysociety.com.

As of this past Saturday, it is officially summer, and the Northern Hemisphere is beginning its long bake under the sun. Every square inch of the garden notices as flowers burst into bloom all over, and everything is a wonderful verdant shade, for the meantime anyways. Perhaps no flower best sums up summers arrival than the opening of daylilies. The ones in my garden are particularly fond of blooming right on or just after the solstice on the 21st, as are my container Jasmines. Daylilies are a reliable and most welcome companion in the garden, as these perennials are able to fit in just about anywhere, and are hardy as can be!

The genus Hemerocallis has many representatives over the Northern Hemisphere, but the main garden cultivars are in the species H. fulva from Asia. Daylily or Tawny Daylily comes in many wonderful crosses and colors, all with the same scent in greater or lesser quantities. The most well-known cultivars are in the yellow-orange-red tribes, but cultivars exist in every color except blue (last I checked anyways). The most widely available cultivars are ‘Apricot Sparkles’ (light orange), the Decatur series (yellow-orange mixes, some with red centers), and Stella d’Oro (classic yellow-gold). Most garden nurseries will carry a few different colored cultivars, and a mixture of colors I find is more aesthetically appealing than a large patch of Stella d’Oro anyday! Double and triple-flowered cultivars are available aplenty, but I prefer the singles.

The fragrance is not like other lilies in the larger family, but do share a warmth to them like other lilies. They lack the musk of the Stargazers and trumpet lilies, and imbibe a crispness to their scent instead. Its a scent that does not spread, but awaits for the nose to behold and love. I daresay I prefer it to many other lilies out there, because it is not overbearing in its sweetness like the Stargazers and Easter lilies can be. To me, it is the floral scent of summer, a verdant sweetness that is worth loving.

In addition to many colors, the varieties come in many sizes, ranging from minis (less than one foot tall) to cultivars holding their flowers up to five feet tall. I’ve often noticed the daylilies that escaped into the wild have been the taller ones, with smaller flowers and skinnier petals. The plants are bulbous, but spread from their tuberous roots like rhizomes. The leaves are clumping in a fan shape, and are long and green, but otherwise unimpressive. The flowers appear on a long stalk but open day-to-day with fresh flowers always becoming the spent ones. Daylilies get their name from the fact the lily flowers open only for a day at a time. Sometimes they develop seed heads, but these are easily removed. The flowers tend to last through July and into August, but are done by September in most cases.

These perennials will effectively last forever in a landscape, again one reason why I love these flowers! They are drought hardy, cold hardy, and low maintenance,  a bit hard to get rid of in the landscape, which is the one downside to them. Lastly, the petals are edible, and can be used fresh in salads.

 

Grape Flowers

Vitis riparia. Arthur Haines. 2014. https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org.

Grape blossoms are one of the rarest, yet most memory-stirring scents of the countryside. The grape family is known for its fruit, but its inconspicuous summer flowers are a treat in themselves. They have a scent much like the fruit they will become, with an odd muskiness that is accentuated particularly strongly in morning and evening. The fragrance is one that could honestly never be bottled, but is more memory stirring than most others I’ve come across in my life of nose sampling.

The species with fragrant flowers are all American natives. V. riparia is a common grape scrambling in moist forests and along stream sides in the Eastern United States. It has a rankish albeit sweet fragrance. V. vulpina, the frost grape, has an extremely sweet fragrance at evening, resembling concord wine. Both make nice wines of their own accord. The frost wine requires a frost before making wine, but makes a sweet wine with a high alcohol content. Wild grapes also have some herbal benefits and the leaves and bark are oft used in teas.

There are many others that can be listed as having slightly to strongly fragrant flowers of a wine-like accord.

Summer

Summer is a season of happiness. Children are out to play, being fresh out of school for the year, and lovers bask in the sun on the grass at parks and gardens throughout. Its a season of brightness and maturity all in one. The garden is abound with scents- from fresh cut grass to lillies, roses, and more. Truly it is the best season of the northern reaches, as the long days cause plants to explode with greenery. After the fiftieth parallel, the sun is just below the horizon much of the night, creating a brightness noticeable most of the short night along the northern horizon. Even farther northern reaches will experience white nights, a romantic early and midsummer darkening of the evening, a time of perpetual twilight rather than actual night. Summer brings the heat of course, the humidity to many regions, and smattering of storms to keep the green lasting through the hottest months.

Summer is never really easily defined as to when it begins, or even ends for that matter. Summers can be long in the tropics, short in the poles, and everything in between for everywhere else. In the States, the unofficial start is Memorial day in May, while officially it is on the solstice. Locations in the tropics will say summer comes with the return of the trade winds and humidity in May or June. For the mid-sections, summer comes with weather in the eighties consistently, and children coming out of school. For the north, real summers are harder to define by latitude, and highly variable. Whether it be when the weather is consistently warm, or just the lack of snow on the ground, summer is quite hard to pinpoint a real beginning when ‘winter’ is the norm.

Summer brings the bounty of flowers that then turn into the wonderful harvest of fruits and grains. Moreover, it brings the joy that life brings when being outside is no longer a chore but a pleasure, when sunning oneself is the norm, and summer skins abound. Whether fleeting, or long, summer is the favorite season of many poets and normal persons alike.