So, once again I had someone ask me a question about their lilies and what they were saying didn’t make sense to me. I finally realized they meant daylilies.

I’ve always known that Lilies and Daylilies aren’t even in the same family but, offhand I couldn’t recall what family Hemerocallis was in so I pulled up MOBOT and told this friend that hems are in the Asphodelaceae family while real lilies are in the Liliaceae family.

As  I was about to go to bed tonight, the name Asphodelaceae was bugging me so I decided to look it up in my 18 yr old American Horticulture Society book. AHS says Hemerocallis is in the Liliaceae family!  So I cross-checked with my really old Hortus Third. Same answer, Liliaceae.

Hmmm…so, back online, I went to the RHS site and they show it’s the Asphodelaceae family. And then on to Wikipedia to find that Hemerocallis are members of Asphodelaceae’s subfamily Hemerocallidoideae.

Ok, the question - - when did Hemerocallis change families? What I find odd is that even in the 1990s I knew these two plants weren’t in the same family, but AHS & H3 don’t bear that out. Why?

Anyone?

Kitty

(the silly things that can keep one up at night!)