Daylily ‘Mary Todd’

It’s fun to get caught up in the latest and greatest daylily cultivars, but some of the best performers are the still the old standbys. One of my favorites is ‘Mary Todd.’ It was introduced in 1967 and won a Stout Medal (the highest award a cultivar can receive) in 1978.

‘Mary Todd’ grows 24 inches tall with beautiful 6-inch yellow flowers. Every once in awhile my plants give me polytepalous blooms.

This daylily is a blooming fool. I have several of them massed together and they reward me with flowers for more than 6 weeks in the summer. They have withstood droughts, floods, heatwaves and late-spring snowstorms. Nothing slows them down.

‘Mary Todd’ is an older cultivar, so it’s very inexpensive. I’ve seen it for sale for as little as six dollars. And the plants clump up nicely, so before long you can divide your plant into several more and have a lovely, dependable display for very little investment.

If I could only keep a handful of the hundreds of daylilies I grow, ‘Mary Todd’ would definitely make the list.