On weekends in the late summer and early fall, the road leading to Daylily Mountain in Taimali Township, Taitung County, southeastern Taiwan is especially busy. When the lilies bloom, a sea of orange covers the flanks of the 1,340-meter-tall mountain. “High-altitude daylilies generally flower in places that are higher than 800 meters above sea level. And those at the highest point of the mountain flower first,” says Kao Li-chin (高麗卿), secretary-general of the Taimali Daylily Mountain Agritourism Development Association, which manages an information center on the mountain at an elevation of about 900 meters. “Here around the information center you’ll see all the daylilies in full bloom soon,” Kao says on a day in early September this year. “It’s a beautiful sight.”
According to the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture (COA), there were 623 hectares of farmland in Taiwan dedicated to daylily cultivation in 2012, with Hualien and Taitung counties comprising 77 percent and 13.6 percent of the total amount respectively. Daylilies are more than just ornamental, however, as the bud is edible before it blooms and has long been used as an ingredient in Chinese cuisine. The Mandarin phrase for daylily is jin zhen, which means “golden needle,” a reference to the shape and color of the bud. One of the best-known dishes using the ingredient is called pork rib soup with golden needles.
More recently, the agritourism sector in southeastern Taiwan has focused on the visual appeal of daylilies. The orange blooms are usually seen from early August to late September on Daylily Mountain as well as Chike Mountain in Yuli Township and Liushidan Mountain in Fuli Township, both in Hualien County. Visitors to Chike and Liushidan are rewarded not only by the collective beauty of the blooms, but also by breathtaking views of the East Rift Valley, while those touring Daylily Mountain are greeted with a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean.
Starting Anew
The development of daylily cultivation in eastern Taiwan is linked to a tragic flood that occurred in 1959 and is one of the worst natural disasters the country has ever experienced. On August 7 that year, a typhoon began dumping heavy rain on central and southwestern Taiwan that continued for three days, causing floods that claimed 669 lives and severely damaged tens of thousands of hectares of farmland. With their crops lying buried under a thick layer of sand and mud, a number of local farmers chose to relocate to Hualien and Taitung and start anew, this time growing daylilies.
Wu Chung-hsien (吳忠憲) and his six brothers were among the earliest farmers who moved from central and southwestern Taiwan to Taimali after the disaster. “Our rice paddies were ruined by the flooding, so we came here,” says Wu, who moved from Changhua County, central Taiwan to Daylily Mountain in 1961 when he was 18 to begin cultivating the flowers.
The original species of daylily grown in Hualien and Taitung came from Ali Mountain, better known as Alishan, in Chiayi County, southern Taiwan. At the time of the flood, Alishan was the center of large-scale daylily farming, and following the disaster, farmers such as Wu realized that the techniques used to grow the flowers there were equally suited to the highlands of Taitung and Hualien. Since that time, however, Alishan’s daylily fields have been almost completely replaced by tea plantations.
Laborers clear fields on Daylily Mountain in a historic photo from the 1960s. (Photo Courtesy of Green Mountain Farm)
Golden needle farming entered its golden era in the 1960s as more and more farmers began cultivating the plant in eastern Taiwan. “At the time, one tai jin [a measurement of weight used in Taiwan equaling about 600 grams] of dried golden needles had the same value as the combined daily wages of three workers,” says Tsai Cheng-ming (蔡政銘), manager of his family’s Green Mountain Farm on Daylily Mountain, of the economic rewards for golden needle growers during the 1960s and 1970s. Tsai, 40, learned about the industry’s past from his father and grandfather, who settled on Daylily Mountain in 1967 and soon began selling golden needles around Taiwan. “At one time, the farm employed nearly 100 workers to pick the daylilies and process them into dried products,” he says.
Challenges began to confront eastern Taiwan’s daylily farmers in the 1990s, however, as labor costs rose and lower-priced dried golden needles imported from mainland China appeared on the market. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s overall demand for golden needles was also declining, Tsai notes, likely due to changing dietary preferences.
With their livelihood at risk, daylily farmers began to consider their options, one of which was shifting from agriculture to agritourism. In 1997, the Taimali Farmers’ Association launched a daylily tourism promotional campaign and called on growers not to harvest the plants before they bloomed. The campaign has continued and has been relatively successful, Tsai says. “Previously, the only time farmers let their plants flower was when the market was saturated and harvesting the golden needles wasn’t profitable. But today they do it on purpose most of the time,” he says.
As word of the spectacular orange flowers waving amidst beautiful natural settings spread, agritourism businesses started to take off. In 1997, for example, Green Mountain Farm renovated what had been a break room for laborers and turned it into tourist accommodations. The farm also began operating a restaurant featuring golden needle-themed dishes in the mid-2000s. “Today the farm harvests only a small amount of daylilies and has shifted the majority of its production to agritourism,” Tsai says.
As the daylily season usually lasts only two to three months, Green Mountain grows other species of flowers at different times of the year in order to attract tourists year ’round. Likewise, most farmers who still grow a large amount of golden needles for use as food boost their income by cultivating other crops. Many of those in Taimali, for example, also grow custard apples, a Taitung specialty fruit.
Local governments on the east coast have played a major role in promoting daylily tourism, mainly by providing subsidies that encourage farmers not to harvest the buds. The goal is to attract tourists to the flowering fields and thus stimulate spending in the area’s accommodation, dining and transportation sectors. As a result of the subsidies, this year farmers allowed a total of 90 hectares of daylily fields in eastern Taiwan, or 16 percent of all such fields in the area, to bloom for the purpose of attracting tourists.
Fresh golden needles are spread out to dry under the sun in front of the Taimali Train Station. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
In Taimali this year, farmers could apply to receive NT$80,000 (US$2,670) per hectare of blooming daylilies under their cultivation. The subsidy was provided by the Taimali Township Office, which contributed NT$50,000 (US$1,670) per hectare, and Taitung County Government, which contributed the remainder. Subsidies were available for a total of 10 hectares in the county this year. For Taimali farmers, the income from the subsidy slightly exceeds the income realized by harvesting the buds, Kao says.
In wealthier Hualien County, subsidies were available for 80 hectares this year. Hualien has two main areas for daylily tourism, and each was allocated subsidies for 40 hectares. The compensation per hectare of blooming daylilies in Hualien was NT$120,000 (US$4,000), an amount that was undoubtedly the envy of Taimali farmers.
Sea-Level Species
Golden needles were originally grown only in high-altitude locations, but in 1990 the COA’s Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station announced the development of a new food species that grows from sea level up to 200 meters in elevation. As a result, the number of hectares dedicated to cultivating daylilies began to increase.
Concerns over the safety of daylily food products began mounting later that decade, however, as Taiwanese consumers grew increasingly health-conscious. Most of the concern centered on the quantity of sulfur dioxide that growers used to prevent harvested golden needles from blooming, preserve freshness and maintain their bright color.
The Taiwan Daylily Association was founded in Yuli in 2003 and has since worked to address food safety concerns by cooperating with researchers from northeastern Taiwan’s National Yilan University. According to the association, the sulfur dioxide issue first came to light in 1998, when the Consumers’ Foundation, an independent nonprofit organization, released a report indicating that the vast majority of preserved golden needle products it had randomly inspected contained a sulfur dioxide level of more than 10,000 parts per million (ppm), an amount considered harmful to human health. In May 1999, the Cabinet-level Department of Health, which was upgraded to the Ministry of Health and Welfare in July this year, responded by setting 4,000 ppm as the maximum safe level for sulfur dioxide in dried golden needle food products.
Today, most of Taiwan’s golden needle farmers restrict the amount of sulfur dioxide they use to less than 4,000 ppm. Some growers reportedly continue to use more, but their products face a nationwide market ban if testing reveals higher concentrations.
New ornamental daylily species developed by the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station (Photo Courtesy of Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station)
It was not easy to sell the healthier golden needles at first, however, as some consumers balked at buying buds that were not bright orange. “Initially, the safer version was quite unappealing in color,” explains Shen Kuo-chou (沈國周), a grower and director of the association. Researchers therefore began looking into alternative processing techniques that preserved the orange color but did not require a harmful amount of chemicals. “Thanks to their years of research, the safe golden needles now look acceptable to consumers,” Shen says.
Daylilies have a Mandarin nickname that means “carefree plant,” and Shen has cultivated his crops for more than 30 years in the scenic and aptly named Carefree Valley. These days, he takes advantage of every opportunity to educate the tourists who visit his farm and his small shop about the measures he takes to ensure the safety of his golden needles.
Meanwhile, Peng Juen-zhi (彭俊智), director-general of the Taimali Daylily Mountain Agritourism Development Association, is attempting to revive the traditional practice of preserving golden needles by steaming them before they are dried, as was done before sulfur dioxide was introduced about 20 years ago. “I wanted to show how healthy people’s diet was in the past,” he says of his adoption of the largely forgotten method about three years ago. Still, while steaming eliminates all need for sulfur dioxide, the buds lose their color, Peng says. The process is also quite time-consuming, which means that more development will be required to make the technique suitable for use on a larger scale.
Researchers have continued their efforts to improve both edible and ornamental daylilies. In 2012, the Taitung extension station announced the development of another new edible variety called Taitung No. 7, according to Chen Ying-fang (陳盈方), an assistant researcher at the station. It took four years to develop Taitung No. 7, which is especially suitable for growing in plains areas. The variety is likely to be well-received by growers and consumers because its buds can be preserved without sulfur dioxide and still retain their bright color for a long time after.
Meanwhile, the COA’s Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station launched an effort to develop new ornamental varieties in 2002. In the past four years, five ornamental varieties in various colors have been released to seedling growers. Hualien No. 1, which was announced in 2009, for example, has already been cultivated on a small scale on Liushidan Mountain, while another farmer has been experimenting with growing several varieties on the plains of Taoyuan County, northern Taiwan.
“The five new species are expected to extend and enrich the daylily viewing season up in the mountains in Hualien and Taitung,” says Tsai Yueh-shiah (蔡月夏), an assistant researcher at the Hualien station. “They all bloom in spring. When they start to wither, it’s time for the older species to flower and display their beauty,” she says.
The efforts of Taiwan’s researchers and growers have made golden needles safer to eat and fields of blooming daylilies easier to view. For lovers of Chinese cuisine and those with an eye for natural beauty, that is good news indeed.
Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw