To say Spring is in the air is an under statement. We were a little above 70 degrees today. The day started off cloudy then about noon the sun came out. I have been debating about cleaning my beds out because i was scared the dormants would want to start growing and a late freeze would burn the folage. Too late for that as the dormants are already out from their winter hidy hole. You basically have 2 kinds of folage on your daylilies. Dormant or Evergreen. I will explain as best i can. When fall comes the dormants will be light sensitive and the folage will start to turn yellow and as the cold of a freeze or even a good frost will send the green all the way back into the roots. No folage will be exposed for the cold winter to hurt. As spring comes and the ground starts to warm the Dormants emerge and have a stiff folage almost looks like a type of cactus plant. After the plants start to grow and folage gets bigger they all loook alike. This time of year is when to best look at your seedlings and future introductions to see if they are Dormant or Evergreen.
Evergreen means just that, the folage trys to grow all winter and stay green. As winter sets in the folage will turn to mush and will be a blob of brown not resembling a dayliliy at all. But each little warmup will get the plant in the growing mood again. This is why evergreens do not over winter well in the northern states. Some do ok and are somewhat hardy with mulch around them and other evergreens are so tender they cant take the cold and will die.
Here is a picture of a dormant and an evergreen daylily in the same picture, it is not hard to tell which is which. Here in central Arkansas the ground is warming up and the plants are wanting to grow so now is when i can tell what kind of plants my daylilies are. I just love the way dormants look when they emerge in the spring.
I have posted 2 diploid seedlings we like very much. This line is where we have tried to extend the green in the throat on out onto the petals. This is a dark green and will not be hard to find where it stops on the petals out of the throat. I have seen some daylilies the grower said had green throats and i just didnt see it. I dont like recurves like this seedling shows but i do like the amount of green it has. The big flat seedling is what i like in my diploids. We now have dip seedlings with 3 inch sepals and over 4 inch petals. You can see in this picture this 7 inch flower has big sepals and petals.
I want to Thank those that have taken the time to email us here at Wooster Garden the past couple years and tell us you really like our flowers and what we are doing. In another month we will line out seedlings, that some have 12 fans and some have 6 fans to a clump. We are lining these plants out for future sales. I am not sure how many fans we will need to offer a plant for sale. Some increase well and some dont. Myself, i love the big selfs without any other color or eye in them and thank goodness some of you are that way also. But we will have different eyes and eye patterns on others, we really hope to be able to offer a daylily that the public would really want. From what i have seen in daylilies the past couple years the prettiest flowers and advances have been made with the diploids. Thanks for looking. Jim Elliott
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