Author: Korth

Never a dull moment in the daylily garden.  Today the purples were glorious while a couple days ago, the colors were muddy.  The hot weather does affect the daylily colors.  Last night was a little cooler so the colors were wonderful.  Blue eyed flowers were also colorfule today.  We saw interesting patterns the last few days.  Below are some of the nice seedlings seen the last few days:

Seedling 924-23 (Heartbeat of Heaven x Song of the Redeemed) is dormant and has a huge white edge. 

Seedling 994-1 is out of Cerulean Warbler by one of our blue eyed seedlings.  This is as blue as we have ever seen a daylily.  I actually edited the colors on this flower to make it less blue.  I always check the green leaves to make sure they are green and not blue green. 

Seedling 158-2 is a fancy flower from 2 of our seedlings.  The backtround includes Heartbeat of Heaven and Ancient of Days. 

Seedling 162-1 is a colorful seedling from Cosmic Kaleidoscope and Arno’s Bow Tie (Korth 2012 introduction).  We like the clean green throat and lavender blue eye.  Diploid.

Seedling 1011-1 is a nice patterned eye.

We hope that we get better seed set this week with a little cooler weather.  Last week was awful for looking at daylilies and hybridizing.  The patterns and colors were melted by the heat.  Last night was good so we hope for a few good days of daylily viewing.

The heat wave got up to upper 90’s today.  This is the time for the pastel flowers to shine.  Pinewood Gardens has introduced some great pastel flowers including August Wedding, August Bride, Heir to the Throne, Pinewood Easter Morning, and Shining Like the Son.  With this background of genetics, we are seeing wonderful seedlings this year. 

Seedling 86-1 is out of Heir to the Throne and is a little better color and bigger edge.

Seedling 5-3 is out of Heavens Morning (Korth 2011) and is a gorgeous yellow with huge ruffles.

Seedling 122-5 is Blown Away (Korth 2011) x Fringy (Stamile) and has a wonderful green edge4.

Seedling 800-7 is out of Heir to the Throne again with huge ruffles.

184-1 is a pale lavender out of two purples each with Heir to the Throne in the background.  Here the genetics went back to Heir to the Throne but the result is a gorgeous flower.

Hot weather through next Saturday.  Rain on Sunday night of more than 1 inch helps with the plants.  When we first started hybridizing, we could not imagine the gorgeous purples with white edges we are seeing in our seedlings.  Our first break in this breeding was Tears for Gus.  Ancient of Days was next and that has proved outstanding as a parent with the white edge continuing in future generations.  Seedling 814-11 is from Anicient of Days. 

Seedling 15-1 is a dormant out of 814-11 breeding. 

Heat moved in today and should last all week.  Temperatures hit 92 today with dew point of 78.  I mowed lawn in the middle of the heat and could not have sweat any more.  This first hot day we noticed more patterns in our patterned eye program.  We also have seen lots of teeth on our seedlings. 

Heman (Gossard 09) crossed into  Cast Your Crown (Korth 09) seedlings gave us some great teeth this weekend.  Below are some pitctures.

Finally, Heman crossed into our 2011 introduction One Foundation gave us this great seedling:

Seedling 909-1 has Cast your Net in background as well as Spring of Living Water (Korth 2011 intro).  This is dormant and has good scape height and budcount.  Nice patterning today:

Seedling 166-3 is from future introduction 719-4 (from Jamaican Love breeding) and showed patterned eye on a nice wide petaled flower.

We have been having fun with our diploids this week.  Our seedling 739-2 will be named Arno’s Bow Tie and bloomed this week.  We also are seeing the first seedlings bloom from Arno’s Bow Tie.  Below are pictures of ABT and the first kids from ABT

The following plants are our first seedlings from Arno’s Bow Tie.

Weather was cool and dry today.  Great for being in the garden. 

We breed for blue eyed daylilies and have several daylilies hybridized elsewhere that we have used in our program (Blue Desire and Bit of Blue were blooming today).  Our blue eyed seedlings are at least as blue as any others we have seen.  Today the colors were vivid.  I suspect it was from the sky reflection (cloudless blue sky this morning) and the cooler temperatures (mid fifties this morning).  I photographed everything in RAW format today and color corrected away from blue to get as accurate a color as possible.  One way I check color is to look at the green foliage in the picture.  If it has a blue tint to it, then the photograph is biased toward blue.  Another trick I use is to use fill flash even though there is plenty of natural light.  The fill flash is a clean white light and will take out some of the blue from the sky.  Here are two seedlings photographed today:

908-3 is a Tet. Lavender blue baby seedling x Spring of Living Water – our 2011 introduction from Destined to See background.  We like the blue eye pattern way out on the sepals.  This was photographed with fill flash to reduce blue sky reflection.

Seedling 146-1 combines our Destined to See lines (Pleasing to the Eye and Grace Like Rain) with Blue Hippo. 

We also saw some seedlings with white teeth today.  One was one we held over from last year, 29-2.  The dark eye and double edge came from a seedling (Cast Your Crown x Tears for Gus) crossed with a Heavens Proclaim seedling.  With Julie Newmar in the background of Heavens Proclaim, we have genetics for teeth on both sides of the cross.  Neither parent had white teeth so that is a bonus.  I guess we are getting old when we are going back 3 and 4 generations to get to named daylilies that we did not hybridize.  We think the white teeth and near black edge are a nice contrast.

The final seedling is a cross of two Heartbeat of Heaven (Emmerich) seedlings with Tears for Gus in the genetics as well.  We love the clear color on this one  – first bloom today.

Today was cooler and less humid.  The flowers took longer to open up but were wonderful.  Here are pictures and descriptions of some of the best.

Rocks Cry Out – our 2009 introduction.  It is an early season bloomer and looks like nothing else in the garden.  Spectacular today and look at yesterdays post on seedlings from RCO.

Seedling 8-5 is a likely future introduction.  A kid from our dormant breeder 715-1 crossed with Gavin Petit.  The flower is dormant, vigorous, and gorgeous.  It first bloomed last year so will be a couple years before we introduce.  We will be using it for hybridizing the next couple years.

Seedling 7-3 is (Cast Your Crown x Rocks Cry Out) x Red Friday.  It first bloomed last year but did not show teeth.  The first bloom this year showed teeth as well as being bitone.  Teeth come from Cast Your Crown and Red Friday.

Seedling 133-1 is a first flower today.  Luel and I always look for a flower that makes us go “wow” and this one did.  Hopefully it will continue to do that in future years.  We collected pollen today and will spread some around in the coming weeks.  Parents are Cast Your Crown (Korth intro 2009) x Heman.

Today we saw some interesting seedlings from Rocks Cry Out.  This Pinewood introduction is a unique flower but has been somewhat difficult to breed with.  We are not trying to make narrow flowers but RCO tends to breed narrow.  The other problem with RCO is getting clear colors.  RCO  has a tan edge so there is some brown in the original flower.  We are working with RCO to make it wider and breed patterns. 

Today we had two new seedlings with RCO in the background.  Seedling 123-1 is (RCO x (Forestlake Ragamuffin x Web Browser)) x Heman.  The teeth come from both parents and the plant is tall and well branched just like RCO.  The color is richer than Heman and the edge more of a contrast.

The second seedling is 121-1.  This is RCO crossed with a Red Friday Seedling.  The form is much more round and the ruffles are immense.  This is a different look from the RCO breeding and we will try to work with this on other red seedlings. 

Each bloom season gets us excited about the direction of our hybridizing program.  Many times our planned crosses do not go as planned but some surprises keep us going in new directions.  The flowers below are some that we intend to breed with in the next few years.

Seedling 3-3.  This first bloomed last year and we observed it was a great color.  This year we were able to observe it in a garden setting and found it has dormant foliage and scapes with 20 buds and a couple laterals.  These two features are critical to produce high performance daylilies.  The parents are Born to Run x 809-3.  Seedling 809-3 will be an introduction in a year or two and is proving to be a great parent.  Seedling 3-3 is shown below:

Seedling 102-2 is from New Paradigm but the eye pattern is broken up.  We found this unique and will cross this with others in our program to hopefully enhance this unique look. 

Our diploid program will be enhanced this year with new seedlings to cross into our older seedlings.  This flower stood out on a tall scape that we could see 100 feet away due to the large green throat.  The flower is 6.5 inches with the green throat 4 inches in diameter.  It is the green throat that makes this visible across the yard.  We will use this on our future introduction 739-2 (to be named Arno’s Bow Tie) to enhance the size and flat opening. 

Seedling 908-3 is out of Spring of Living Water (our 2011 indroduction).  The blue eye and similar pattern on the sepals is great looking and the clump is showing excellent scapes this year.  It is evergreen but has done well here for the last 3 seasons.  We will still work with this in hopes of getting dormancy in it but we hope to load it up with pods from Blue Desire, Bit of Blue, and some of our Blue Hippo seedlings. 

Today was te first day that we had nice seedlings that did not hve New Paradigm as a parent.  Apparently New Paradigm breeds for early season bloomers. 

Seedling 105-1 is from 836-2 x 924-11.  Both seedling parents have our own Ancient of Days as one parent which resulted in this new seedling having a clear color and white edge.  We could see this one from across the garden.

Seedling 106-1 – Blue Desire x 912-10.  This seedling is much larger than Blue Desire and the pollen parent is dormant.

Seedling 103-3 is New Paradigm x 719-4.  See post about Bird of Prey to get information about 719-4.

Seedling 109-1 is from our diploid program.  Parents are 802-5 x Kermits Scream.  Seedling is more green than Kermits Scream.