Eat up your daylilies: The underappreciated east Asian flower that's a marvel in the kitchen

Of all the edible flowers rightly championed, I think daylilies receive too little appreciation. In both beauty and culinary pleasure, they really are hard to equal. Daylilies are not true lilies, but belong to the genus Hemerocallis — from the Greek hemera, meaning day, and kallos, meaning beauty — which hints at the flowers’ fleeting nature. Typically opening at first light, each flower cheers the garden until the evening, when it fades rapidly. At first, I had trouble with the idea of robbing the garden of something so beautiful, but picking them late in the day before the decline sets in means I get to enjoy them twice: outside and in the kitchen. Happily, flowers are typically produced over a number of weeks, so you can expect more beauty to replace that which has gone.

When I say da