Daylily
Daylily
Dear friends:
Hello everyone! Welcome to the famous hometown of daylily.
Daylily is a traditional export commodity of China, sold to more than 20 countries and regions including Japan, the United States, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Shaoyang in Hunan, Qingyang in Gansu, Dali in Shaanxi, and Suqian in Jiangsu are the four famous daylily producing areas in China, with Hunan having the largest output and the best quality.
Shaodong and Qidong are famous hometowns of daylily in China, with output accounting for about 50% of the national total. Since the 1980s, their export volume has accounted for more than half of the national total. Their small-packaged daylily once won the honorary title of "Quality Product" from the Ministry of Foreign Trade. It is a traditional famous and special agricultural product, listed as one of the eight most precious vegetables in China.
Shaodong has a long history of cultivating daylilies. According to the Qing Dynasty "Shaoyang County Annals," as early as the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1398), the people of Shaodong gathered daylilies in the wild for food, and later vegetable farmers transplanted them for cultivation. Currently, Shaodong alone cultivates 80,000 mu, with an annual output of about 8,000 tons of dried flower buds, possessing 28 quality resources and 3 national-level superior varieties, achieving a complete set of early, mid, and late-maturing varieties. In 2002, it obtained a national patent, and its products won the Hunan Famous Brand Agricultural Products award and the gold medal at the 4th (International) Agricultural Expo of Hunan, China.
"Xuan, namely the flower that makes one bear boys, with six-petaled young buds, whose flower base is edible." Dried daylily is made from the dried and processed flower buds of the daylily before they bloom. Because its flowers are golden yellow and shaped like needles, it is called golden needle vegetable, also known as "forget-sorrow grass." It is famous for its floral fragrance, bright yellow color, fresh sweetness, delicious taste, and rich nutrition. According to measurements, fresh daylily contains nutrients such as protein, fat, calcium, phosphorus, iron, carotene, thiamine, riboflavin, ascorbic acid, and carbohydrates. It is currently a typical green health food in China, not only selling well in the domestic market but also exported to more than 20 countries and regions including Southeast Asia, enjoying a high reputation in the international market. Daylily is the flower bud of the lily family plant Hemerocallis, and because its petals are thick, golden in color, and richly fragrant, with a smooth, tender, and sweet taste when eaten, it is often listed alongside shiitake mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, and winter bamboo shoots as a "delicacy on the table." The brain-boosting soup made with daylily, shredded pork, and shiitake mushrooms is renowned at home and abroad.
Daylily has many beautiful names: golden daylily, deer scallion flower, Sichuan grass, red thorn, daylily sprouts, and others, and Japanese people call it green scallion tea. It originated in southern China and Japan, and has a cultivation history of more than 3,000 years in China. No one would have thought that daylily also has a beautiful and poetic name, called xuancao. In ancient China, "xuanting" and "xuantang" were often used to refer to mothers, so among the people daylily is called the "mother's flower." I long ago saw xuancao in literary works, and also saw many poems praising xuancao, and I also know that in ancient times the room where the mother lived was called xuantang, and xuancao thus became a symbol of the mother. Recently, daylily has become the flower representing Mother's Day, and therefore it is widely cultivated in Europe and America.
Besides being named for its goose-yellow flowers, daylily is probably also related to a legend circulating among the people. Legend has it that in those years Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, down on their luck among the common people, were reduced to beggars. In a year of great disaster, the two were begging with no success and fainted from hunger on the ground. Fortunately, they met an old woman surnamed Huang who practiced kindness and Buddhism; she took the two into her home and made them a basin of fragrant and delicious green vegetables that saved their lives. To repay her life-saving kindness, the two named this dish "daylily." The ancients also, based on the edible value of daylily, gave it elegant names such as forget-sorrow grass, sorrow-curing flower, deer scallion, boy-bearing flower, and calming vegetable.
The golden-yellow daylily was already called xuancao in "The Book of Songs," also known as forget-sorrow grass. In the "Book of Songs: Wei Feng: Bo Xi," there is the record "How can one get xuancao, and plant it behind the house." When annotating, Zhu Xi said: "Xuancao makes people forget their sorrows." "Mao Shi Pin Wu Tu Kao" says that "The Book of Songs: Wei Feng: Bo Xi" contains "How can one get xuancao, and plant it behind the house. I long for my husband, which makes my heart ache." "Xuan" means "forget. Xuancao, also written as xuancao, is the grass that makes people forget their sorrows." Ji Kang also said in "On Nourishing Life": "Xuancao makes one forget sorrow; one is glad to eat it." Xuancao is called daylily by northerners and golden needle by Cantonese people. "Compendium of Materia Medica" records: "Now eastern people gather its flowers and sell them, calling them daylily." And our elders often called it forget-sorrow grass, and therefore the great Tang poet Li Bai wrote the line: "For shade one should plant plum trees; to forget sorrow one should plant xuancao."
So why is it called "Forget-Sorrow"? This is because fresh daylily flowers contain a nerve-numbing substance called "colchicine," which makes people feel dazed and drowsy after eating them, hence the name "Forget-Sorrow Grass." Li Shizhen also said in the Compendium of Materia Medica: "The tender sprouts of daylily can be eaten as vegetables, and eating them makes people drowsy, hence it is called Forget-Sorrow." He only knew the phenomenon—that eating them made people drowsy—but did not know it was because of colchicine. In fact, the method to remove the toxicity of fresh daylily is very simple: just blanch the daylily in boiling water, then soak it in clean water, and it can be eaten. The water it was soaked in also turns pale yellow, extremely beautiful, like water that has rinsed silk, while the whole room is filled with the unique delicate fragrance of daylily. Once made into dried goods, the colchicine is destroyed and it becomes a non-toxic delicacy. Such a difference—just one step apart.
"Do not say the farmstead has no treasures; golden flowers cover the ground like true gold." This is an apt praise of daylily by the ancients. Daylily has high nutritional value and is also a beautiful and elegant ornamental plant, and has long been praised by people as a "famous dish, beautiful flower, and good medicine." As a famous dish, daylily is very popular. Daylily is fresh in taste, tender in texture, and rich in nutrition, containing abundant pollen, sugar, protein, vitamin C, calcium, fat, carotene, amino acids, and other nutrients necessary for the human body. Each catty of dried daylily contains 70.5 grams of protein, 30 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fat, 17.2 milligrams of carotene, 22.5 milligrams of vitamin B, as well as rich calcium, phosphorus, iron, and more. Its protein content is 3 times that of soybean sprouts, 10 times that of cabbage, and 15 times that of eggplant; its vitamin A content is even 2 times more than that of carrots; its copper content is 9 times that of Chinese cabbage and 49 times that of scallions; its zinc content is 39 times that of tomatoes and 134 times that of winter melon; its iron content is 42 times that of pumpkin and 126 times that of winter melon; its mineral content is more than 3 times that of cabbage; its calcium content is 3 times that of pumpkin and 11 times that of cucumber. It can truly be called a treasury of vitamins and trace elements.
Daylily is also a beautiful flower: its leaves grow in vigorous clumps, green as if about to drip; its stalks stand gracefully, tall and upright; its buds are ready to bloom, elegant and lovely, with a unique charm. Moreover, it is rich in lingering fragrance, a sacred thing in the writings of men of letters, carrying the feelings and thoughts of scholars through the ages. In the Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi wrote the verse, "Dukang can relieve melancholy, daylily can make one forget sorrow." Because of its elegance and beauty, it has also entered the paintings of the famous Chinese boneless painter Yun Shouping and the modern famous painter Zhang Daqian. After painting it, Zhang Daqian specially inscribed: "Though the season for viewing flowers has passed, they still serve the mouth; in my small garden, year after year, they are not sold for money. Whenever I recall these two lines by Bai Juyi, I cannot help but laugh."
No one would ever expect that daylily is such a beautiful flower. The tender yellow blossoms are half open and half closed, with large stamens inside, set off by tender green leaves, looking very pure. Especially on rainy days, against a deep green background, graceful daylilies stand by the water, blooming quietly and elegantly. The flowers in the water, the reflections in the water, form an artistic conception of their own. Perhaps with another flower color, there would not be such beauty—truly like a painting by Monet. No wonder people often describe beautiful young maidens as "yellow-flower girls." Only now do I understand that it is precisely because daylily is so fresh, so pure, so clean, that such a beautiful expression came into being.
Daylily is not only a beautiful flower with rich nutritional value, but also a good medicine, with effects such as calming the nerves, reducing inflammation, relieving heat, promoting urination, and strengthening the stomach. Its leaves, roots, stems, and flowers can all be used as medicine. Daylily is sweet in flavor and neutral in nature, with the effects of nourishing blood, pacifying the liver, and calming and soothing the brain. It has a notable effect in lowering serum cholesterol in animals, and many ancient Chinese pharmacopoeias record this. Decoction of fresh wild daylily roots in water has diuretic, swelling-reducing, anti-inflammatory, heat-relieving, and pain-relieving effects. The Compendium of Materia Medica says: Cooked and eaten, it is palatable, can remove dampness and promote water metabolism, clear heat and free strangury, open the chest and ease the diaphragm, making one calm and free of melancholy, hence the name Xuancao. Li Shizhen also put forward the statement that "among the nine kinds of detoxifying grasses eaten by deer, daylily is one of them." The Compendium of Materia Medica records that daylily is "sweet and cool in nature and flavor, non-toxic, relieves vexing heat, benefits the chest and diaphragm, calms the five viscera, and when cooked and eaten treats red and painful urination." It has the effects of stopping bleeding, promoting lactation, and inducing urination. Modern traditional Chinese pharmacology holds that daylily has therapeutic effects on neurasthenia, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, chronic nephritis, and edema patients. Among the people, daylily is often decocted with white sugar and drunk to treat red and painful urination; daylily decocted with lotus root nodes and drunk also has obvious curative effects on epistaxis and hemoptysis. And using daylily cooked as food to promote milk secretion in postpartum women has remarkable effects.
According to modern scientific analysis, daylily is rich in carbohydrates, proteins, calcium, phosphorus, iron, carotene, vitamin C, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and more. Daylily has therapeutic effects on neurasthenia, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, chronic nephritis, and edema. Because it contains components such as colchicine, it has hemostatic, anti-inflammatory, diuretic, and sedative effects. Regular and moderate consumption of daylily is highly beneficial for disease prevention, health maintenance, and longevity. For elderly individuals with habitual constipation, regularly eating some daylily can strengthen the stomach and spleen, lubricate the intestines and relieve constipation, nourish the blood, and calm the nerves, all without side effects. Due to its high vitamin B content, it can stimulate gastrointestinal peristalsis, promote food digestion, increase appetite, and thus has a calming effect. Daylily is high in potassium and low in sodium, giving it a diuretic effect. It is beneficial for patients with hypertension and nephritis to consume regularly. It can prevent and treat osteomalacia and anemia, and it is also rich in lecithin, a substance that is a component of many cells in the body, especially brain cells, and plays an important role in enhancing and improving brain function. The antioxidant properties of daylily can remove deposits in the arteries and have special therapeutic effects on poor concentration, memory decline, and cerebral artery blockage, earning it the name "brain-healthy vegetable." In Japan, a country known for longevity, daylily is listed as one of the "most representative brain-healthy foods among plant-based foods," and is especially beneficial for fetal development. Professor Setsuo Iino of Japan listed eight brain-healthy foods, with daylily at the top, recommending that modern people suffering from excessive mental fatigue consume it in large quantities. Additionally, daylily is undoubtedly a good remedy for preventing intellectual decline in the elderly.
Dried daylily is rich in selenium, containing up to 173 micrograms per 100 grams, which is 289 times higher than spinach and 468 times higher than Chinese cabbage. Selenium, together with vitamin E, participates in the body's antioxidant effects to maintain cell membrane function; it stimulates the production of immunoglobulins and antibodies; protects the thymus, maintains lymphocyte activity, and enhances immune function. Research on selenium intake across more than 30 countries has found that the lower the selenium intake, the higher the cancer incidence rate. The latest studies show that daylily can significantly reduce serum cholesterol levels in animals and humans, which is beneficial for the recovery of hypertensive patients, making it a suitable health food for them. It is recorded that Dr. Sun Yat-sen once used "Four-Ingredient Soup" as his fitness diet recipe. "Four-Ingredient Soup" is made by cooking daylily, black fungus, tofu, and bean sprouts together, serving as an excellent blood-nourishing and blood-building formula with complete nutritional components, and also a cheap and delicious delicacy in daily vegetarian meals.
Every March in spring, in the mountainous areas of Shaodong and Qiyang in southern Hunan, one can see mountain villagers planting a plant with narrow, flat leaves resembling orchids in various fields. In summer, flower stems rise from between the leaves, bearing beautiful yellow flowers. By harvest season, the fields across the mountains are filled with blooming yellow flowers, a golden expanse, with a fresh, faint fragrance wafting through the air. At this time, both adults and children become busy; amid the fragrant scent, people of all ages carry baskets and run through the grass and flowers, picking the long flower buds and spreading them out in spacious rooms after basketfuls are gathered... This flower is the golden needle vegetable, also known as daylily, a delicacy on our tables. When daylily is harvested, every household eats it. Daylily can be stir-fried with eggs or stewed with chicken, but it is usually stir-fried with pork, using streaky pork with both fat and lean parts, quickly stir-fried with garlic and ginger, the meat and seasonings sizzling in the pan, the rendered oil glistening under the light like a lake surface in sunlight. When the meat is about 70% cooked, the daylily is tossed into the pan, and with a "chirp," oil splatters and steam fills the kitchen. Green chili shreds are added, a little vinegar, and after dishing up, a few shreds of scallion are sprinkled on top, fresh and eye-catching. Thus, a dish of fresh green, golden-yellow, and aromatic stir-fried daylily with pork is ready. Sometimes it can also be served cold or made into soup; there aren't many variations, but the taste is very delicious. Both adults and children enjoy eating daylily—crisp, sweet, and it is the cleanest food.
Daylily is tolerant of poor soil and drought, with low soil requirements, and can be cultivated on field edges or hillsides. It adapts to a wide range of light conditions and can be intercropped with taller crops. Planting once allows continuous harvest for 15 years, making it an excellent choice for soil and water conservation, environmental beautification, increasing farmers' income, and building rural ecological environments.
The leaves of daylily are dark green, broadly linear, and closely resemble orchids. The flower stems grow over 1 meter tall, bearing dozens of flowers that typically open in the afternoon and wither by the next morning; the buds are used for consumption. The flowers are lemon-yellow with a mild, fresh fragrance. The flowering period is from July to August each year; late-blooming varieties start flowering in mid-August, reach full bloom in early September, and finish by late September. During the flowering season, daily harvesting in the garden is necessary, picking early buds as soon as they appear.
The optimal harvest time is when the buds are plump and about to bloom, with the middle section golden yellow, both ends green, the tip dark like a crow's beak, and the pointed tip just about to open but not yet open. Too early or too late is not good. If too early, the buds are green with low sugar content, resulting in poor color and low yield of the finished product; if too late, the buds split open, and the juice easily flows out during processing, leading to poor product quality and difficulty in preservation. Harvested buds should be steamed promptly to prevent them from splitting open and blooming. Daylily flowers tend to scatter and lose their fragrance, thereby losing their value as fresh food, so they should be harvested before the flowering stalks and buds fully open. The picking time is generally around 3 p.m. on sunny days and around 1 p.m. on cloudy and rainy days. Freshly harvested buds are tender and prone to mold, so they should not be left for long and must be processed promptly.
Daylilies are all dried before consumption, and those sold on the market are all dried products. Excellent dried products should be bright yellow in color, plump and tender in strips, clean and mold-free, firm in texture, low in moisture, not falling apart after long cooking, not sticking to each other, and having a refreshing fragrance. Daylilies are rich in nutrients and are an excellent accompaniment to meals. Daylilies are suitable with both meat and vegetables, and their flavor is fragrant, fresh, tender, and sweet. Cooking methods include mixing, deep-frying, braising, stewing, and boiling, and they are even better when paired with chicken, duck, or fish. For example, adding an appropriate amount of daylilies when stewing chicken soup is not only delicious but also has a calming and sleep-promoting effect when eaten for dinner. Some people add glutinous rice to daylilies to make daylily porridge. In addition to traditional dried processing, in recent years new foods such as golden needle wine, golden needle beverages, golden needle preserves, canned sauced daylilies, canned daylily pig's trotters, and canned daylily braised duck have also been developed. Chopped golden needle vegetables brewed as tea are also fragrant and delicious. In addition, the tender leaves and tender shoots of daylilies can be stir-fried after washing, used as soup ingredients, or mixed into rice dishes, and the tender leaves can be blanched in boiling water and dried into preserved vegetables for storage. Besides the buds being eaten as a vegetable, the fleshy roots of daylilies can also be eaten or used to make wine. Therefore, daylilies are a treasure from top to bottom, a healthful vegetable and a longevity vegetable!