A few of our seedlings
Most of these will be discarded for one reason or another.
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Har040A |
Har018 |
Har040B |
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Har416 |
Haruxu |
Har505 |
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Har5116 |
Har5121 |
Har522 |
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Har528 |
Har554 |
Har542 |
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Har406 |
Har511 |
Har5154 |
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| Notice the double row of teeth on the petal edge |
As you can see from the pictures, there is not much special here. We are extremely concerned with other characteristics rather than just having a pretty "face".
Different individuals tend to look for different characteristics in their daylilies. Everybody tends to look for different things. Dr. A.B. Stout listed eight major characteristics after color.1
1. Able to withstand cold winters
2. Long blooming season
3. Flowers which do not bleach, curl or wilt (or discolor?) due to sun or rain
4. Blooms must fall off the plant quickly
5. Blooms which stay open during the evenings (extended bloom)
6. Blooms opening above the foliage, but not too far above
7. Scapes strong enough to support the blooms but not too large
8. Healthy and lush foliage to beautify the garden continuously
A couple of these desirable characteristics may need some additional information. Number four which states that the blooms must fall off the scapes quickly is desirable unless the breeder is trying to develop blooms that last more than one day. We all dream about a daylily which hold its flowers, in good shape, for three or four days. I suspect that if this is ever to occur we must develop blooms that do not fall quickly. Plants in which the blooms occur below the top of the foliage are mostly a waste of money, in my mind. At times, however, one might want a tall scape along a wall to show the flowers off high above the foliage. Stout was right that if the scapes are too tall they tend to fall over and the energy necessary to produce them will decrease the amount of energy going to produce a number of large flowers.
Viola Richards2 also talks about Mrs. Bright Taylor's four essential characteristics of her daylilies: 1)Vigor, 2)Floriferousness, 3) Durability, 4)Distinction. The first, Vigor, may be thought of as directly influencing both the number of flowers and the hardiness of the plants. We have all noticed the different colors of the leaves of the various daylily varieties. Most of us assume that the darker green the leaves are the more vigorous the plants. This sounds good, but do we have real evidence for this? All of us who hybridize our own varieties have probably noticed that some of the seedlings lack, or partially lack, chlorophyll. When plants lack chlorophyll, the plants will either be yellowish in color or nearly white. Either way they die once the stored food in the seed is used up. The yellow color is due to carotenoids which are necessary for photosynthesis to occur. White seedlings may be white because they are low in both carotenoids and chlorophyll. This might lead one to conclude that the dark bluish-green leaves of some varieties would be low in carotenoids while the dark yellowish-green leaves of others might be yellowish because of the high carotenoid content. Using this logic we would expect that the bluish-green leaved plants would not grow as well as those high in carotenoids. Has anyone found this to be true? More work must be done to determine the reasons for the bluish-green vigorous plants. They might, very well, have higher concentrations of clorophyll in the leaves.
We should also be looking for blooms which open early in the morning and last until late evening. It is important to see color in the early morning and in the evening as well as in the late morning and early afternoon.
1. Richards, Viola. 2006. Evaluation of Daylilies. The Daylily Journal vol 61:(no. 2), 190-191.
2. Richards, Viola. 2006. Evaluation of Daylilies. The Daylily Journal vol 61:(no. 2), 190-191.
