’08 Introduction – PRELUDE TO PANOPLY (name subject to AHS approval)

T01-03 ( PEARL HARBOR x SHIMMERING ELEGANCE). This fine plant is an early season bloomer for me and starts blooming in the 3^rd week of June here in northern West Virginia . PTP is a hard dormant, goes completely underground, and has been trialed in northern New Hampshire where it not only survived an open winter with -30° F temps, it also increased from 2 fans to 14 fans over two seasons.  PTP has a 34” scape that display 6” to 6.5” blooms of shell to salmon pink that sometimes show a slight rose halo.  Scapes show top Y or W with 2-3 lateral branches carrying from 26 to 42 buds with mid 30’s the average budcount here. The blooms have nice ruffling and show a very fine gold edge.  PRELUDE TO PANOPLY is one of the best EMO’s in the garden and absolutely the best CMO (cold morning opener) that I grow.  I’ve seen it wide open at 7 a.m. after 42°F nights in late June.  Pollen fertility is excellent while pods are extremely difficult to produce, but are possible.  I’ve got 60+ seedlings with PTP as the pod parent growing in the greenhouse as I type this.  $75/double fan, $10 shipping.

    6.5” bloom on June 30^th                              3 year old clump                  Scape structure in clump

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’09 Introduction - TOAST AND JAM (name subject to AHS approval)

T01-01 ( EYE ON AMERICA x ANGEL’S SMILE).  Long awaited, this plant has generated a fair amount of interest not only for its’ beauty but for the unique genetics and rare color for an ANGEL’S SMILE seedling.  The habit for TAJ is somewhere between a hardy semi-evergreen and dormant – new growth certainly looks like typical dormant foliage here but it doesn’t go completely underground during the winter months.  Scape height is 22” with a top Y and 2 lateral branches.  Budcount is typically 22-23 and blooms are 5”.  Colors are a diamond dusted cinnamon orange with a grape purple eye and inner picotee and there is an orange gold serrated edging outside of the purple picotee edge.  TOAST AND JAM is another excellent EMO and CMO in the garden.  Pod and pollen fertility are both quite easy and TAJ is producing some very interesting seedlings. Two are show below.

                 TOAST AND JAM                     TAJ x MOMENTUM                    TAJ x S-COAST PICOTEE PRINCE

ADENA DAYLILIES ’07 seedling overview…What a year!  We started off with a warm March that was followed with a late spring freeze (when the foliage on most plants was 8” tall or higher) that had 9 consecutive days with below freezing nights (3 were below 20°F) and 3 days of snow.  After that stress, the summer of ’07 was the driest in the last 30 years.  As the scapes were developing, we had less than ¼” of rain from April through June and then very little more rain until October.  Thousands of new seedling scapes withered and died without showing any blooms.  Bloom size, budcounts and rebloom on other plants were typically depressed/suppressed.  Still, there were some beauties to catch our eye and here are a few photos of the best.

The cross for the seedling below is (SUPREME EMPIRE x AMERICA ’S MOST WANTED 1) x (SUPREME EMPIRE x AMERICA ’S MOST WANTED 2) – a sib cross.  The first sib has 5 way lateral branching and 44 buds while the other had wonderful throat sculpting and scape height but average branching.  Neither rebloomed.  The seedling shown has 6”+ blooms, 3 lateral branches (in drought) and sent up rebloom scapes in mid-August. My thanks go to Richard Norris for the gift of seeds from the original cross.

CLARIFICATION crosses – once again, this Richard Norris introduction has demonstrated a unique ability to clear up colors in seedlings and produce vigorous plants with well branched scapes that handle stress easily.

BRAIDED EDGINGS x C                           UNKNOWN x C                              ROCK SOLID x C

NO BLUE OXFORDS crosses – this tall, well branched Norris intro that is related to CLARIFICATION is proving to be an outstanding parent for seedling with great color, height, bloom size and instant rebloom.

All of the following are from a cross of UNENDING MELODY x NO BLUE OXFORDS

Other NO BLUE OXFORD seedlings…

    MARY’S BABY x NBO           ROCK SOLID x NBO 1          ROCK SOLID x NBO 2          ROCK SOLID x NBO 3

MARY’S BABY seedlings…what a parent MARY’S BABY is!  Lots of rich deep blue purples but playing on a hunch, I took MB to some other eyed and edged parents to try for bluish eyes and got some interesting results…

        MARY’S BABY               PALACE GARDEN BEAUTY    WOMEN SEEKING MEN      WOMEN SEEKING MEN   

                      X                                            X                                              X                                           X

          ROCK SOLID                          MARY’S BABY                       MARY’S BABY                     MARY’S BABY 2

The following are all from a cross of REGAL BRAID x MARY’S BABY

Like many other people working with daylilies, I’ve been drawn to the color blue – it’s not a huge focus of my hybridizing attempts, but there are some interesting seedlings appearing in the fields…

                ROCK SOLID                                             POINT OF DIVERGENCE                       PALACE GARDEN BEAUTY

                        X                                                             X                                                                    X

               MARY’S BABY                                      REGAL BRAID                                             DRUID’S CHANT

PINK STRIPES seedlings…I continue to work with PINK STRIPES, my initial introduction, and am getting a wide range of interesting looking – some might say strange looking – seedlings.

The cross for the seedling shown above is (RED SPIRE x UNKNOWN HUBEN SDLG) X INDIAN GIVER x PINK STRIPES).  The seedling is 30” tall, blooms are 5”, there are 4 lateral branches that also branch at the ends – budcounts are in the 40’s, it produced at least 3 sets of scapes, the pods start out as black colored and slowly change from bottom to top to a dark green, and the creamy yellow blooms have dramatic lavender stippling and PS striping…talk about strange!

These seedlings are from a cross of BIG SNOWBIRD x PINK STRIPES – the striped pattern shows on all of the seedlings but in some instances a strange thing is happening.  The striping seems to be following the raised ‘netting’ of the petal structure – it is similar to veining but it’s raised above the petal surface – check out seedling photo #2.  Blooms are in the 5” to 6” range and the last photo shows the branching typical of the cross.

The first 2 seedlings from this group are a cross of INDIAN GIVER x PINK STRIPES and the 3^rd on is a cross of INDY FLOPPY MAMA x PINK STRIPES. Finally, the 4^th one is from a cross of one of my very old, circa 1988, seedlings – a UFo, almost spidery seedling with a white edge x PINK STRIPES.