Mother Nature's Palette

My best efforts to create color harmony in the garden fall far short of what Mother Nature does without any help from me. An example greeted me yesterday.  My "Camelot White" foxglove re-seeded in a new spot, and when it did, the blossoms were a pale yellow, rather than the creamy white that I remembered the parent plant to be.  Enter it's companion, a lily that has puzzled me for years.  I never purchased this lily or consciously acquired it from a friend.  It simply appeared a few years ago, probably as a stowaway with a clump of another plant.  Its characteristics are unlike any other daylily I've grown.  It blooms in Spring, rather than summer when all of the other daylilies are creating a riot of melons, oranges, yellows, burgundies.  It has a very slender stem and the narrowest of leaves.  Mine is painfully slow to multiply or to become mature enough to blossom.  For years it was foliage only.  The flowers are smaller than today's hybrids. Last December when I was leafing through the "Garden Gate" issue that had just arrived in the mail, I finally identified it  (in a moment of what can only be called "garden euphoria") as "Hemerocallis lilasphodelus," or lemon  lily.  According to the article, this is an heirloom type of lily that is often passed down from generation to generation.  If you want to buy one, it can be very tough to find.  I believe the best way to acquire it is to wander through your friends' gardens in early June, and if you spot it, throw yourself at their mercy and beg for a smidge.  But if that's not your style, at least we have a name to google now!