Oh, I didn’t mean to give that impression! I like daylilies. It’s just that they’re some incredibly tough plants. And they grow their roots all together in a great big ball, which has to be picked or cut or pried apart (usually at great effort) when you divide them.
Underneath that erudite, sweet exterior, you’ve got a sadistic streak…
I’m almost sure ‘A’ is a variagated liriope (la-rye-o-pee).
It should get a stand-up purple flower late in summer. Used as a ground cover, sort of, in a lot of places.
Here’s an image. Google liriope for more.
The leaves in ‘F’ look like a Hydrangea. If the blooms turn into things about the size of softballs, it’s most likely that.
“If they are Irises, and I transplant them, will they flower or have they been ruined?”
No, let them die off and dig up the bulbs later in the year. I tried looking online thinking maybe daylillies and irises were there same thing with different names. They aren’t. To me they look like the irises that grow in these parts!
http://www.irises.org/photos.htm
The leaves are big and fat.
I looked up daylillies and the leaves seem much thinner
http://www.northrup.org/photos/day-lilly/
If leaves in picture A are short then they are most likely crocuses, good call! If separated they should flower next year. Leave them for now though.
The pictures you link to only show the flowers and the upper tips of the leaves. When daylilies first sprout in the spring, they’re much more compact and the leaves look wide. The leaves will lengthen and appear much thinner later in the season. Irises also grow pretty much in a flat plane, like a fan of leaves, and the pics that RumMunkey posted show leaves growing in a more rounded fashion.
I believe Trunk beat me to it! “A” looks just like the liriope I have coming up in my garden every year. Here’s another pic that shows the variegated coloring of the leaves.
I’m not sure. If you look at your picture, the color pattern is dark green in the center and gold on the leaf edges. The color pattern of what RumMunkey posted is gold in the center and dark green on the edges. I’m not an expert on Liriope (never grown it myself) so it’s possible that the variety you posted the picture of is only one variation on the color possibilities, but I’d be suspicious of an identification based on that photo.
Depends on the kind of iris – Japanese irises have foliage that grows in grasslike clumps.
Ah…I’ve only done German. I still say they look just like the daylilies around my mom’s house in the spring, though.
You are correct that the color patterns are different, but there probably are different varieties of the “variegations”.
here’s a good image of non-variegated liriope.
Which somewhat naturally appears darker in the middle, and lighter on the edges, but nto as drastically as RumMonkeys.
Do a side by side and see how similar they look. We’ll know for sure when flowers come up.
Any comments on my Hydrangea identification? I’m only about 55% sure on that one.
F is Alliaria Petiolata - a wild flower/weed with a huge number of common names, including hedge mustard, hedge garlic(it isn’t related, but the leaves do smell faintly oniony when crushed), Jack-by-the-hedges, sauce-all-alone… it’s a biennial of the cabbage family - the whole plant is edible raw or cooked.
I don’t think they’re hydrangeas – as I said, I have a similar weed in my garden. The leaves look hydrangealike, but the stems don’t look woody, and the flowers are all wrong.
On irises vs. daylilies – I’m in the daylily camp on that particular clump, I was just saying that different kinds of irises have different kinds of foliage. My Japanese irises have never gotten as dense as the picture in the link.
AH HA! This may make sense. Last year when we first moved in I took my electric trimmer to a different patch in the garden and just levelled the whole overgrown mess. Just after I blasted my way through there was a strong smell of onions (“strong” as in “my eyes watered”). There are some remnants of a vegetable garden long neglected (rhubarb! yum! I’m going ot try and bring that back to life) so I figured it wasn’t out of line to have been green onions. I wonder if I blew through a patch of Alliaria Petiolata.
So, if I may summarize the popular opinion:
A could be neglected crocuses (hence no flowers, may flower again if taken care of) or Liriope (look for a stand-up purple flower in late summer).
B is probably either Irises or Daylilies. Will anything happen during the year that will tell me for sure? S certain type fo flower maybe?
C is probably Lily of the Valley but might be Freesias? It seems to be spreading in from my neighbour’s yard so I tend to lean to Lily of the Valley as that was mentioned as a characteristic.
D is Grape Hyacinth. I’m not sure if I mentioned how small that thing is, but it is very small. I always thought Hyacinths were great big bushes.
E is apparently a lesser known burgundy version of a Chinese plant called a Peonies. It will bloom really nice flowers in summer. (I’m having a hrd time finding a picture online of one of these that isn’t green though).
F is likely Alliaria Petiolata. Generally considered a weed and can sread wildly.
Am I about right?
I want you to get back to us on the Liriope issue.
It looks like someone actually put some time into those plantings. Lots of different foliage, bloom times, heights, widths, colors.
Do you have a picture of the overall design? Any stonework?
The flowers will tell you. There’s no possible way to mix up iris and daylily blooms.
Definitely lily of the valley. You’re way too far north for freesias to have survived the winter.
Are you mixing them up with hydrangeas? Hyacinths are all fairly small (usually under 2ft high). Grape hyacinths aren’t really hyacinths, though (they’re in the genus Muscari rather than Hyacinthus) and are much smaller than even those spring hyacinths that are everywhere in April.
As the leaves age, they’ll probably green up. The peonies we used to have in our yard always came in bronze/burgundy and then went green by the end of May.
B will probably bloom – sooner if irises (unlikely), later if daylilies (the consensus).
C is lily-of-the-valley. There’s no freakin’ way they’re freesias. Trust me on this.
D: hyacinths are small, very fragrant flowers (you might be thinking of hydrangeas as the great big bushes). Regular hyacinths will have bloomed already – clusters of flowers shaped like a cone with a rounded head. (They remind me of ladies’ church hats of the '50s, but you may not be old enough for that to resonate.) They are, IMHO, rather ugly – but very fragrant, and they bloom as early as, if not earlier than, daffodils, so I’ve got a few in the garden anyway. Grape hyacinths are a smaller, not as fragrant, flower – don’t know if they’re “real” hyacinths or not.
E – peonies bloom late spring/early summer (usually around the end of May for me, probably in June for you.) Given the flower buds, I think that’s the most likely ID.
jayjay and twickster – separated at birth? 
Do you REALLY want to claim twinship with THIS face? 
I wish. I’m sure this garden was nice when the people who lived in this house before the people we bought it from were here. The people we bought it from let the entire thing to (almost) to hell.
Uncovering it all is almost like an archaeological dig. Under the dead stuff, and behind the falling down railroad ties (ugh!) I’m finding what would have been a really nice garden.
There are just a few tulips in there, and a gorgeious cherry tree. There were 2 pear trees but I took them down last month. The rotting pears was too much to keep up with. There was also a rose bush but it hadn’t been pruned in at least 4 years and was out of control, so it’s gone too.
Chiming in…
C is definitely lily of the valley, they have clusters of small white bell flowers that smells wonderful. Lily of the valley is poisonous to people and dogs, so don’t snack on it!
D is grape hyacinth