What does "the daylily has gone cold" mean and where does it come from?

The daylily is also called the calming vegetable, among other names, and is a plant vegetable commonly seen in rural areas. Its nature and flavour are sweet and cool, and it can be both eaten and used as medicine. As medicine it has certain effects such as stopping bleeding, reducing inflammation, clearing heat and draining dampness, and for this reason it is liked by some people. But in daily life we often hear the saying “you wait until the daylily has gone cold”. So what does “the daylily has gone cold” mean? Where does it come from?

1. What does “the daylily has gone cold” mean?

In fact, “the daylily has gone cold” means a teasing criticism of someone who is late or something done late. The daylily is originally a perennial herbaceous plant with fleshy roots of the genus Hemerocallis in the family Liliaceae, and Shaodong County and Qidong County in Hunan Province have been named “the place of origin of the daylily”. It is said that in the Qidong County area of Hunan Province, which is rich in daylilies, the last dish served at a banquet was the daylily. If someone arrived only after the last dish had gone cold, then of course everyone would blame this person, but in order not to hurt his (or her) feelings, they would say, “We waited for you until the daylily went cold.” As everyone used it widely, “the daylily has gone cold” later came to mean that too much time has passed and the wait has been too long.

2. Where does “the daylily has gone cold” come from?

In ancient poetry and prose, “yellow flower” refers specifically to the chrysanthemum. Su Shi once wrote in “Nanxiangzi · Double Ninth at the Hanhui Tower Presented to Xu Junyou”: “All things come to nothing but a dream; enough, enough. Tomorrow’s yellow flowers would grieve even the butterfly.” Here the yellow flower in the poem refers to the chrysanthemum, and “tomorrow” refers to the day after the Double Ninth Festival. The line “tomorrow’s yellow flowers would grieve even the butterfly” means that if you miss the best time to view chrysanthemums at Double Ninth and only come after the festival, the flowers have already withered, and even the bees and butterflies would take no pleasure in them. This is used as a metaphor for things that are past their time. Put in the simplest and most colloquial way, it means “too late”, which is exactly the same meaning as “the daylily has gone cold”.

Therefore “the cucumber dish has gone cold” evolved precisely from “tomorrow’s yellow flowers would grieve even the butterfly”, except that Academician Su’s verse was too elegant, and ordinary people, swallowing it whole like a date, found it hard to digest. So, as errors spread by word of mouth, first “yellow flower” became “daylily”, and later it became “cucumber dish”. The reason for this misunderstanding is probably that the character for “butterfly” also bears some of the blame, because “butterfly” is homophonous with the “dish” used for serving food. And so Su Dongpo the lay Buddhist’s “yellow flower” finally turned into a “cucumber dish” served on a “dish”. If you come late, would it not have gone “cold”? That is the origin of “the daylily has gone cold”!

Summary: The above is an introduction to the meaning and origin of “the daylily has gone cold”. We hope it is helpful to friends who need it!