Daylilies as vegetable (and roadside lead)

Does anyone grow daylilies as a significant food source? If so, how many plants do you grow per person and what is your production like?

I'd like to get a sense of how many plants are needed to get a few meals of buds a week in season, and then what the harvest of roots could be.

I've bought H fulva selections 'Kwanzo' (a double known in the west since 1721) and 'Rosalind' (known in the west since 1930 and the type for H fulva var rosea).  'Kwanzo,' which is a triploid double, will produce plumper buds, i presume.  I gave in to 'Rosalind' a a weakness for variety in color. Then there are feral ones at the ditch by the road. I haven't transplanted any of the ditch ones although i've harvested a few buds here and there, aware there is some likelihood of lead contamination. The road was probably not heavily traveled during the era of leaded gasoline, so i ponder how concerning transferring plants from the location would be (because i do want to eventually eat the tubers).

I know a "little":

1. No, I don't grow them as a significant food source but I do add them to stir fries. I'm in deer country, and deer like them...

2. I have read that some of the "fancy" lilies, are crosses with things which aren't as edible to humans, so I've only eaten the common orange daylily Hemerocallis fulva without "improvement" - I suggest you research the selections and see if you can find out about the edibility of them.

3. I have researched lead issues. Sunflowers are good at taking up lead from soil, so growing sunflowers and sending the plants to the dump is supposed to remove lead.

4. I'm not sure that's your only concern about roadside harvesting though. I am pretty worried about many of the chemicals that can wash off roads, particularly from tire wear. That subject was discussed here on permies recently, and by far the consensus was that permies wouldn't harvest food/medicinals from roadsides. However, harvesting seeds and planting them out would be fair game. If your soil is healthy, the odd bit of gick in a seed wouldn't worry me, particularly with a plant like a daylily which will take time to get to a harvestable size. Microbes and fungi in soil are pretty good at cleaning up small messes.

Jay Angler wrote:
2. I have read that some of the "fancy" lilies, are crosses with things which aren't as edible to humans, so I've only eaten the common orange daylily Hemerocallis fulva without "improvement" - I suggest you research the selections and see if you can find out about the edibility of them..

I've read the same. There are a couple species used as edibles in Japan and China  http://www.hemerocallis-species.com/HS/Articles/Hem_Evolution_d.htm has good species listing:

*  H. altissima (Stout, 1942) got its name due to its tall scapes which can be up to 2m tall. The buds are also sometimes used as vegetables after being dried (but more often this is done with H. citrina buds).
* H. citrina (Baroni, 1897) is the most odorous Hemerocallis species. Probably due to this trait, its buds are collected shortly before opening in the late afternoon, dried and sold as vegetables, which are then added to meat and/or other vegetables.  

There is also a listing of the ten H fulva varieties and selections that are based on historic collection, not hybridizing. Kwanso is well established historically (introduced to the west from Japan in 1712), and Rosalind was a selection from the wild in China sent to the US in the early 1900s. I'd be comfortable considering all these to be H fulva, especially noting
H. fulva 'Europa' is likely what many of us have as wild ditch lilies.

Thanks for the roadside advice; i'll go look for the other thread -- it was an impluse to add to my main question -- while i'm asking how many plants lemme ask if i can fill out that number with some form the ditch. So, nope. Won't do that.