After working in the garden much of the day yesterday, I made Wild Daylily Gin & Tonics to celebrate the first day of summer. Here’s to summer!
Wild Daylily Gin & Tonics
The blooms in these summery cocktails are edible and are meant to be eaten. They taste like cucumbers and are easiest to eat starting from the stem end.
Gin
Tonic Water
Lemon Slices
Hemerocallis fulva Blooms (See note below.)
(1) Pick fresh Hemerocallis fulva blooms. Remove and discard the pollen covered tips from the stamens. Gently wash blooms in cold water.
(2) For each G&T, fill a tall tumbler about 3/4 full of ice. Add lemon slices. Fill about 1/3 of the way with gin then top off with tonic. Gently stir. Place a daylily in the top. Enjoy!
Note: Do not eat true lilies or use them as garnishes. True lilies – plants in the lillium family (e.g. Easter Lilies, Asiatic Lilies, Oriental Lilies, etc.) – are poisonous. Daylilies are not true lilies. Ones of the wild variety are edible, though occasionally someone is allergic to them. Hemerocallis fulva – wild daylilies – are the only daylilies recommended for eating because, given the many different hybridized cultivars out there, it is possible that some one or another could make a person sick. Wild daylilies, the tall orange ones that are often seen growing wild along the side of country roads, are edible. I grow them in my garden and use the blooms to garnish beverages and salads. I haven’t tried eating the tubers, but I have read in several places that sauteed wild daylily tubers are quite tasty.
There are a number of articles available on cooking with daylilies. Here are a few links:
A Taste of Morning 
Our daylillies are just starting to bloom. We add nastersum flowers and leaves to our salads in summer. One more family picnic (for 20) today before we send everyone off to the airport, and get life back to normal!
Oscar
Nasturiums are always a colorful and zesty salad addition. Have fun at your picnic!
Especially when spelled correctly (I was working on phonetics, while family was talking to me).
Really? It makes the drink so colorful and refreshing, I didn’t know that daylilies are edible.
Really : )
Sounds wonderfully (and beautifully) refreshing!
After working in the garden on a hot day, it is wonderful!
Now your talking. My favorite cocktail. Not many daylilies here though I might give it a try with a hibiscus bloom.
I’ll have to give hibiscus a try once mine start blooming : )
Interesting post. The drinks looks gorgeous. I have eight daylillies plants exploding in my garden right now. I was admiring them the other day and notice the next morning the ones I was admiring were wilted. Then it occurred to me they are “day” lilies. In my curiosity I googled them to find some varietals are edible! Although I do not have any plans to ingest them, I am a little more fond of them knowing they serve another purpose. 🙂 Beautiful drink!
There is something comforting about knowing which of one’s plants one can eat if so inclined : )
I am KICKING MYSELF for not digging up and taking the wild orange lilies that beautified my MA. garden. I can’t find anything like them down here! will prob resort to online ordering.
I love how the flower tops off your wonderful beverage! excellent combo for a hot summer’s day!
Do the wild daylilies grow around you? Perhaps you could talk a friend out of a few : )