You've seen them all along the roadside as you drive down Midwestern country lanes in late June, big tussocks of bright green, grasslike leaves; out of these shoot straight stalks, topped with orange or yellow lily-like flowers. Colloquially called "Ditch-Lilies", these plants are so ubiquitous as to elicit little comment; though colorful, their blooms aren't especially noteworthy, and just seem part of the landscape. You'd be forgiven for thinking they've always been here.
But in environmental circles, ditch-lilies have a more sinister reputation: native to East Asia, they were planted for their flowers and ground cover, and then - as they are today - mostly forgotten. This allowed them to steadily proliferate wherever they were planted, quietly pushing up shoots every spring until, with little notice, whole hillsides are covered with the weeds. They grow virtually anywhere, crowding out native plants and compacting soil with their tubers. One eerie aspect of these plants - at least anecdotally - is their complete lack of pollinators and predators. I personally have never seen a single insect visit their flowers, or even feed upon their tissues; deer seem to avoid them. While my native plants are hammered by critters both native and invasive, my ditch lilies stand aloof, a steadily-growing army of sterile, unkillable clones, advancing across the landscape.
And yet...there is one saving grace: you can eat them! Yes my friends, that insidious, ever-expanding mound of green in your garden is an unexpected crop, and a rather tasty one at that. In this post, I'm going to lay out the edible aspects of this humble (albeit nefarious) flower, while offering some cautions concerning similar-looking species.
Part I: Disclaimer!
Whenever you are looking to eat some unfamiliar weed, it's important to follow a set of protocols to avoid, you know, agony and death. Outside of the produce aisle, there are some very toxic plants, and some of them look superficially like edible ones...and even the edible ones can cause you grief. So let's lay down some ground rules before you gallivant off into your yard to chow down:
1. Don't take my word for it. Just like LeVar Burton on Reading Rainbow, I want you to get a second opinion - and a third and fourth one. I'm not an expert; I'm not licensed in any way; all you have is my word on the edibility of some plant or fungi, and for all you know, I might be trying to kill you!! Haha no, jk lol...but seriously, do your own research. There are plenty of excellent guide books to wild food, and even classes where an experienced, licensed forager will give you a tour of a park and explain all the helps and hazards therein. If you do go with internet sources, listen to your high school teacher and compare several sources - don't just rely on a single source!
2. If you don't know what it is, don't fuck with it. I could perhaps put that in less vulgar terms, but I feel the need to get the point across. For instance, if you are foraging for mushrooms, you'll probably come across some kind of generic lawn fungi that looks like three or four different species in your guide book, but also like none of them. It could be Honey Fungus...or Deadly Gallerina. Inspect it, research it, measure it, and then set it gently on the compost pile. Don't get it anywhere near that frying pan. And wash your hands once you're done with it.
3. Double check! Not to keep harping on this, but there are plenty of times a person was "confident" that their "wild food" was "perfectly safe", only to end up damn near killing themselves and your dinner guests. If you come across a shrub full of dark berries, don't just do a cursory glance in your guidebook and say, "Aha! Blackberries!" and then fill a basket full of them. They might just be poisonous pokeberries. Even worse, pokeberries in particular won't cause illness after just one berry - it takes about a handful before you experience symptoms, and then usually an hour or two later. So make sure you combine book-research with field research, both before and after you forage.
4. Start slow. After you do all your research, you might be tempted to fill your basket with [insert wild plant food here], get it home, and chow down. But even a perfectly benign plant can give you a bad reaction. All plants contain a bewildering array of chemicals, and you could be sensitive to any one of them. So if you're trying a wild food for the first time, prepare and eat a little bit first, then wait for a few hours. Signs of a reaction include: burning or tingling in the mouth, rash, stomach upset, dizziness, diarrhea or vomiting, and trouble breathing. If all is well after the first taste, gradually build yourself up to a full meal. And if you really want to be extra-careful, document the What, Where, and When (including the time) when you picked and ate something; this could be useful information for the EMTs.
5. Don't overharvest. Foraging is supposed to be fun...sometimes even I have to remind myself of that. It might be my OCD, but sometimes when I forage I end up making it a whole efficiency process, as if I need to gather enough to feed my family for the winter. I have to remind myself that no, I don't need to strip a whole mulberry tree of its berries branch-by-branch - I can leave some for the birds. Maybe it's that "clean your plate" syndrome, where I can't let food go to waste; but the fact is that in nature, nothing goes to waste, and everything is food for everything else. So please, resist the American urge to Grab All the Things. This goes double for protected species like morels: there is a whole gray-market industry for gathering and selling wild morels, and once a species becomes a commodity, overharvesting is guaranteed. I won't condemn anyone who relies on this source of income, but I hope to God they leave a few morels to grow and propagate the species.
The only caveat to this, of course, is invasive species, like the ditch lily: eat them! Eat them all! Don't leave a single one alive!! But they'll still pop up anyway. They're unkillable.
Okay, so all that's out of the way! Let's talk about what a ditch lily actually is:
Poisonous lookalikes
Daylilies are fairly easy to identify...as long as you know what you're looking at. There are some common garden plants that share characteristics with the daylily, but are quite toxic. Below is a list of these common plants, how they might be confused with daylilies, and how to distinguish between the two:
1. True Lilies. Daylily flowers do look a lot like true lily flowers - hence their name. But true lilies grow as an upright stalk, with many narrow leaves, and are often fuzzy ("glaucous") under the leaves and on the stalk. True lily flowers themselves are quite glossy and rubbery to the touch, while daylily flowers just feel soft; true lily flowers also last for quite a long time, while daylily flowers wilt after a single day. Another telltale sign of lilies is the invasive Red Lily Beetle, whose disgusting, shit-covered larvae (yep, they cover themselves in their own feces) strip the leaves bare. Underground, lilies tend to grow from round, sparse, onion-like bulbs, sometimes quite large; daylily tubers are small and oblong, and grow in large numbers amidst a root mass. Lilies are most toxic to dogs and cats, but certain species are toxic enough to kill a human. If you do nibble a lily - or even touch your mouth after handling them - the chemicals can cause your lips and mouth to go numb.
2. Iris. Irises are also large, perennial, spreading, tuberous plants with flat, grasslike leaves that put out tall flower stalks; they're most likely to be confused with daylilies before the flowers come out. The devil's in the details: Iris leaves grow in a flat arrangement, like a fan; each interior leaf is actually tucked inside the one outside of it, folded so tightly that you can't see the opening. The leaf color is more of a blue-green, as opposed to the bright grass-green of daylily. The flower stalk starts flat, emerging from within a central leaf, before becoming rounded; each bud is oblong, with the unopened petals visible but rolled up tightly, and cupped inside a one-sided "sepal" (sometimes "calyx"), or supporting leaf. Iris flower stalks will often branch more readily than daylily stalks. The flower itself looks nothing like a daylily flower: three large, drooping petals below three smaller, erect petals, heavily ruffled. The inside of the flower is often covered in thick fuzz, hence "bearded iris", and the stamens are tucked inside. Irises usually come in yellows and purples, rarely whites, reds and oranges. Underground, irises have distinctly large starchy tubers that are lumpy and brown; they often clamber all over one another, with the tops emerging from the ground. All parts of the iris are toxic, and can kill pets but usually only produce gastrointestinal problems in humans.
3. Lily-of-the-Valley. LoV (as we'll henceforth call it) is a very common woodland and garden plant, with broad oblong leaves and a short stalk with white, hanging, bell-shaped flowers arranged in a row like, well, bells. After flowering, they may produce bright red berries. LoV's rarely get more than a foot in height. They grow in the same habitat as daylilies, and may be confused with them as the shoots emerge in the spring. Though they don't produce bulbs, their rhizomes (shoot-producing roots) go all over the place, and there's a danger of digging them up with daylilies when foraging for tubers and accidentally gathering the roots. LoV is the only plant on this lookalike list that is guaranteed to send you to the hospital: all parts are toxic to humans, and can be deadly to young children and pets, affecting heartrate and respiration and sometimes causing seizures, along with the usual gastrointestinal problems. Thankfully, the shoots of LoV are quite distinct from those of daylily: Daylily shoots are loose, with the already-green leaves spreading almost immediately after emergence, and they seem to come up first (at least in my neck of the woods); LoV shoots come up as a pointy, tight spike, with a purplish "sheath" surrounding the base. The best way to avoid poisoning is to not gather daylilies where they are known to mix with LoV.
4. Fertile Daylilies. This is a murky subject; I've heard that seed-producing daylilies can be toxic, but I've also heard that the seedpods can be cooked and eaten. I've also heard that different colors (species) of daylilies can produce weird effects when ingested. My advice is to just stick to the orange, clonal varieties - the original ditch lily. If you find a promising patch, leave it alone for a year and just observe its growth, flowers, and whether or not it produces fat, three-lobed seedpods.
Possible toxicity/allergy effects: Allergies are a huge issue with plants, since you might eat a plant regularly for years with no effects, only to suddenly develop an allergy to it; the same is true with daylilies. Make no mistake, daylilies are chock-full of chemicals, even if they aren't necessarily toxic to humans, and any one of those (or a combination) could provoke a reaction. I've also read that large quantities of daylily shoots are hallucinogenic; I've seen this over and over in online sources, but without any description of the hallucinations, which makes me think it might be one of those oft-repeated rumors with no merit. Still, it's always good to be aware. Proceed with caution!
Part II: Okay, whatever. How do you eat the damn things?
The great thing about daylilies is that you can eat them raw or cooked, so there's really no wrong way to eat them (I guess don't chow down on the stalks and mature leaves, though - a bit unappetizing and tough). The really great thing is that these plants provide you with food in every season:
1. Spring: Shoots & Tubers
Ah, Spring: two months of deadly cold, ice storms and rain, followed by one mostly nice month. Oh sorry, I live in Michigan. Thankfully as you emerge in March, sunken-cheeked and wracked with vitamin-deficiency disease, you'll find a welcome little surprise poking up in your daylily patch: the slightly messy green shoots emerging from the ground.
Shoots!
Go ahead, try a few raw. So long as you harvest them before they get 8" tall, you'll find them succulent, sweet, and pleasantly "green" flavored. The only downside (at least for me) is a slightly chemical aftertaste, so don't go stuffing yourself or you'll get a hell of a tummyache. It might be best to use them in a stir-fry, pan-seared with eggs, or boiled like cabbage. Make sure you have something strong to accompany them, like onions, as the flavor tends to overwhelm blander dishes.
It's Not a Toobah
Tuber are probably my favorite part of the daylily, if only because they don't have a strong aftertaste. I select tubers that look "young" and are white when cut; they'll be pretty small, maybe the size of a chestnut, and may have an orange outer coating. Cut them off the attaching root (they're pretty tough to snap off with your fingers), then remove the rootlets off the end; cut them in half and drop them in a pot to boil - no need to peel, they're too small and finicky anyway. You'll notice a strong but not unpleasant aroma shortly after they get hot. Just like potatoes, they're done when you can push a fork through them easily. The flavor is complex, starting out as bland and starchy, then segueing into "buttery" territory, then ending on a nice nutty finish. Just like potatoes, you can boil and eat straight, or mash them with butter and seasoning, bake them, or fry them in a pan. I'd recommend the tubers for beginners, since daylily is a bit "exotic" and at least the potato-y aspect is more familiar.
2. Summer: Buds & Flowers
After the shoots get about 8" tall, the leaves become fairly tough and inedible (you can eat them in a pinch, but you won't want to); the tubers will start to deflate and get gross as their starches metabolize. You now have three months without any daylily food available, so enjoy them. Here in Michigan, daylily buds don't start forming until about mid-June, and the flowers don't really come out until the hottest parts of July.
That Dank Bud
Insert obligatory marijuana reference here...daylily buds look slighly like small green hot dogs if you squint; upon closer inspection you'll see they're split into three longitudinal lobes. As they mature, they'll start to turn orange. You can eat the buds at any point during their emergence. Personally, the buds are my least-favorite daylily food - they combine all the vaguely unpleasant things about daylilies and crank it up to eleven. Firstly, you're biting through a waxy, rubbery rind with a center of jumbled-up petals, and that's a weird mouthfeel. At first it tastes like nothing, then the flavor hits you and it's...well, it's daylily-flavored: grassy, sour, a little hint of mellow nectary sweetness, then a big dollop of chemical-y aftertaste. I noticed a slightly alarming tingle on my lips and tongue (although for reference, mango does the same thing to me, and I loooove me some mangoes). This is the kind of vegetable you bread and fry by itself, as the flavor will definitely beat all other flavors to death with a hammer. Personally I'd rather wait for the flowers to come out, rather than pursuing the buds as a food option.
Pappy O'Daniel's Flower Hour
Yeah, that one's a stretch. Daylily flowers are one of the most obvious and easily-accessible of daylily foods, as they quite literally stick out in the breeze. These disquietingly orange blossoms are a welcome sight in the hottest depths of summer, as they come out in July ('round these parts) and stick around into early September, when everything else is withered and fried. I haven't tried the blossoms at their peak, as I'd rather admire them than eat them (also the ungodly amounts of pollen is unnerving, can you imagine a mouthful of that stuff...?); I wait until they wither and close up before plucking them for a snack. So long as you get them before they turn brown and dry out, they'll still be good. The flavor is much, much milder and sweeter than the buds, with a lot more nectary goodness; the outside petals are still a bit rubbery, but with a pleasant snap, and the inside is mushy without being nauseating. I detect a hint of honeydew melon, but it might just be the color playing tricks on me. Be careful not to eat too many raw, I ate three one boisterous day and it started doing funny things to my stomach, and in general I just felt weird for an hour. I tried a blossom in a stir-fry, and it definitely took over; just like with the buds, I recommend breading and frying them by themselves.
3. Autumn and Winter: It's Tuber Time
Just like with potatoes or sunchokes, you'll want to wait until the above-ground portions die back before you go digging up the tubers; as the days shorten and the nights grow colder, the plant will shift to storing starches and sugars in its tubers, fattening them up for the hard times ahead. The tubers will then become slowly depleted as the winter goes on. Autumn and spring are probably the best times for daylily tubers, but you can still dig them out during the winter, so long as the ground isn't frozen solid.
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