Invasive Plants & the Daylily

**Melanie m*@optonline.net**

Well, it has happened, and right after all the postings here on this list.

This weekend, March 26th, the Columbus Dispatch printed an article by Julie
R. Bailey in their Home and Garden section. The article is titled "Invasives
and their Alternatives". Unfortunately Ms. Bailey decided to target the
daylily and began on the wrong foot by calling them "Day lilies".

The second mistake was printing this article in Columbus, Ohio, a hotbed of
daylily hybridizers and a location slated to be an upcoming host of the
national convention for the American Hemerocallis Society.

Strike three came with a lovely photo of a red hybrid Daylily with the
caption "New aliens climbing out of the bed, into the wild".

Caught almost instantly by a local daylily aficionados, the entire daylily
world was alerted to this article and given the author's e-mail address
along with ways to contact the Columbus Dispatch. I do feel sorry for the
woman who has now been inundated with mail. Perhaps she will learn to pay
more attention to her research? In her article she lists a number of sources
which do not list the daylily as invasive.

At this point I've only seen a scanned copy of the article but did notice
the words "stock photo" at the bottom of the daylily image. I'm guessing
that somebody at the newspaper actually chose the photo and had no idea that
they chose a hybrid daylily and not one of the species. Daylilies are
daylilies, aren't they? Most likely this person isn't even a gardener and
the difference means nothing to them.

The American Hemerocallis Society has asked several of it's board members to
address this situation and we will be asking the newspaper to print a
retraction of Ms. Bailey's information. Most unfortunate is the number of
families in the Columbus area who operate daylily nurseries and are now
looking at the possibility of dismal sales at a time that should be their
peak sales time.

More to follow,
Melanie Vassallo
melaniev@optonline.net
American Hemerocallis Society Publicity Chairperson
cc: Kevin Walek - AHS President

_______________________________________________
gardenwriters mailing list
gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters

GWL has searchable archives at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters

Send photos for GWL to gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
at: http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos

Post gardening questions/threads to
&quot;Gardenwriters on Gardening&quot; &lt;gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org&gt;

For GWL website and Wiki, go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters