Daylilies for Dinner

by Daniel Nidzgorski

This is a great time of year to get out foraging for wild foods, collecting new flavors and interesting plants that you won’t find in the co-op or farmers’ market. Foraging doesn’t require a trek into deep wilderness or knowledge of arcane plant-lore. There are plenty of common and easilyidentified edible plants growing right here in the middle of the city. If you can distinguish an apple from an orange, you can start learning a few plants that turn a walk around the block into a bountiful harvest.

One of my favorite sidewalk snacks is the daylily, a common plant in many gardens that most people are quick to recognize and admire, but one that few people eat. Daylilies are a great plant for a beginning urban forager. They’re easy to recognize and distinguish from nonedible look-alikes, they require no special preparation to be edible, and they can be harvested freely without harming the plant or preventing it from reproducing.

Daylilies are versatile in the kitchen: flowers and buds can be eaten raw in salads; stuffed, battered, and frittered; or cooked in soups and other dishes. They’re crisp and crunchy when raw, and when cooked have a soft texture similar to cooked zucchini. Different colors have different flavors—most are mild and sweet, though my favorites are the deep burgundy ones with a peppery kick. The tubers can also be eaten raw or cooked; they have a corn-like flavor and a pleasant crunch.

Know your food!

The first rule of eating wild plants is never to taste or eat any plant if you aren’t absolutely sure of its identity. Fortunately, with daylilies, it’s easy to be absolutely sure. Chances are that you’re already familiar with the deep vase-like shape of lily and daylily flowers. Flowers are four to six inches long, with six petals, and come in a range of colors (orange ones are the most common here). The spotted orange tiger lilies are not daylilies, though tiger lilies are also edible.

Daylilies have flowers very similar to those of true lilies, but their foliage and stems are very different. Many of the true lilies aren’t edible, so this is an important distinction to look for. Daylily leaves grow from the base of the plant and are long, narrow, and swordlike, with parallel veins running from the base to the tip. True lily foliage is often shorter and flatter to the ground, but the best way to distinguish the two is by the flower stems. Daylily flower stems do not have leaves on them. If the stem has leaves along its length, it’s a true lily and should be left alone.

Daylily foliage is easy to confuse with iris foliage if there are no flowers on the plant. And while daylily tubers are edible, iris tubers are poisonous.

If you’re planning to dig for tubers in the spring, before the plant flowers, only do so with plants you’ve seen flowering in previous years and are sure of their identity. Remember, never eat a plant if there is any doubt of its identity.

Look both ways before eating

In addition to identifying the plant correctly, take a minute to look at its surroundings. Anything in the air, water, or soil will end up in the plant as well, so a healthful location is important for gathering healthful food.

Naturalized daylilies are often found in large swaths along roadsides, but major roads are not a good harvest location due to vehicle fumes, road dirt and oil, and de-icing salts. Pesticides and fertilizers are another concern— if you’re eating daylilies from elsewhere than your own yard or garden, first find out if they’ve been sprayed.

As with any new food, it’s a good idea to try small amounts at first to make sure it agrees with you. Some people report that raw daylily flowers mildly irritate their throat, though I’ve never experienced this personally. Daylilies can have a laxative effect in large quantities, but the amounts used in most recipes aren’t likely to cause this.

Gathering the harvest

Daylilies get their name because the flowers only bloom for a single day before fading. If you’re going to cook or dry daylilies, you can pick them at the end of the day when they’re done flowering, or even the next day.

For fresh use, the flowers are best picked in the morning. If you prefer buds, harvest when they are about halfway open.

Remove all the parts inside the flower or bud (i.e., pistils and stamens) and rinse to remove dirt and bugs. Cut off the green bases unless you want to leave the flower intact, such as for stuffing. If you’re storing them to cook later in the day, shake off the excess water and store them in a container or plastic bag in the fridge.

Daylilies can be dried easily on wire racks at room temperature (or in a dehydrator or the oven, if you’re familiar with those methods) and then stored in a cool cupboard. Dried daylilies are called golden needles in Chinese cooking and are an integral ingredient for hot and sour soup.

The one-day-only flowering means that you can harvest buds and blossoms freely without robbing the garden of more than a day’s beauty. Daylilies reproduce mainly by spreading tubers, not by seed; so you aren’t depriving them of reproduction either.

Rather than wait to deadhead your daylilies later in the season, why not pick them right as they’re finishing flowering and make a meal of it? Your neighbors will probably let you pick their daylilies, too, at the end of the day.

Tubers should only be harvested from very large, well-established colonies to ensure that the daylilies will be there year after year. I haven’t been able to find any reliable information about eating daylily foliage, so please stick with the flowers and the tubers. Just because one part of a plant is edible doesn’t mean that the entire plant is edible.

Thoughts for preparing daylilies:

• Garnish green or other salads with the brilliant colors and flavors of raw daylily petals or buds, or with the sweet crunch of peeled and thinly sliced raw tubers.
• Simmer buds in lightly salted water for fifteen minutes, then serve as you would cooked zucchini.
• Stuff daylily flowers for any part of the meal—basil or cilantro pesto makes a great appetizer or side dish; chicken salad or other savories turn them into a main dish. For stunning desserts, fill them with fresh fruit, raspberries and cream, ice cream, or orange or lemon sorbet.
• Chop up day-old or dried daylilies for soups or stews. They add a chewy texture and help thicken the broth.
• Add daylily buds to stir-fries. You can also use fresh or dried daylilies; just rehydrate dried daylilies in hot water for ten minutes first.
• Make pickled daylily buds, using any recipe for pickled zucchini.

Further reading and eating:

Much of the information in this article is from local author Teresa Marrone’s book, Abundantly Wild. If you’re looking to learn more about gathering and cooking wild foods in this region, whether in your neighborhood or off in the forest, her book is by far the best I’ve found.

[Daniel Nidzgorski is an avid cyclist and hiker who loves discovering new foods. He's also pursuing a Ph.D. in urban ecology at the U of M.]