Keith and Celia: Daylilies, and the Art of Paying Attention

Sunday, August 05, 2018

Daylilies, and the Art of Paying Attention

Shortly after we moved into Matsu House two years ago, I discovered a mysterious plant in our garden. Its leaves looked the same as irises, and its flowers like lilies, but with five or so buds on each stalk. There were lots of them, so I cut one and brought it into the house. To my surprise, by the next morning, the flower had faded, but a second bud was starting to open. I observed the flower, fascinated, over the course of several days, until all the buds had opened and faded, one by one.

I looked up the flower in my book of Hokkaido wildflowers. It’s called Ezo-kanzo, or Nikkokisuge when it is part of a flower arrangement for tea ceremony. I realized that it was the same flower we had seen covering an entire hillside on Rebun island several years previously.

See all those yellow bits?

I watched for it in eager anticipation at the end of May the next year, and it became one of my favorite flowers to display in my tea room.

In June this year, I said goodbye to my garden as we headed to the US for two months of home assignment. One evening at a friend’s house, while touring his garden, I saw familiar looking leaves and seed-pods. I turned to Keith. “Those look like…”

“Those are Daylilies,” our friend explained.

“Daylilies,” I repeated. “Because they bloom only for a day, and then the next bud blooms?”

“Exactly,” he confirmed.

It turns out I had seen Nikkokisuge flowers, which I now know to call Daylilies, before I ever went to Japan. I went to Boston, and found them blooming by roadsides in the suburbs. Then I went to North Dakota, and found them in the garden of almost every house, including the house where Keith grew up. They thrive even with winters colder than Sapporo’s, it seems, and they come in colors other than the orange-yellow variety native to Hokkaido.