Lee's Daylily Potpourri: April Fool's Day, 2012

Sunday, April 1, 2012

April Fool's Day, 2012

Blooms in the greenhouse, April 1, 2012

Left click on image for a larger picture.

Each day, there are more blooms in the greenhouse. What a lift it gives when I open the door and walk in to see what new is blooming. It is great to see the named cultivars I am using for hybridizing in bloom, but it is like Christmas to see the new seedlings bloom. When making a cross, I have visions in my head on what I would like to get. Sometimes I get close, most of the time, it is a slap in the face!

This morning Seedling No. 1037 was blooming. It is a cross of [Rock Solid X (Lone Wolf X Robert W. Carr)] I really like the cleanliness of the color and the round, full form. The flower was 6" on a 32" scape.

I know it is unbelievable to see something like this in MY greenhouse, but I like this flower (I really didn't say that). This is H. 'Free Wheelin' ' (Stamile 2004). I have used the pollen and have gotten a couple nice kids. The website says the FW is both pod and pollen fertile. I have never been able to set a pod on it in my greenhouse. If I can't set it here, it is likely that it won't set pods. I don't care for many of the spiders and UF's, but I do like the cascading form.

I will again show an image of Bob Carr's H. 'Wonder Of It All' as it bloomed this morning. I really like WOIA as a parent, but you have to be careful what you use it with. This image this morning was right at 6". Taking a close look at the flower, it appears to me that it would be good used with some of the green edged things. WOIA has that wonderful green throat which, with the right green edged parent, may carry on to the edge of the seedlings. I am trying it, so we shall see. I have also seen WOIA used with H. 'Fringy' (Stamile 2008) with nice results. A few years ago, I had 15 pots of WOIA in the greenhouse with one to six fans per pot. I got to looking one day and I thought I had a lot of pods set on WOIA, so I counted, and there were 165 pods. Is that fertile, or what?

On our March trip to California to speak to the Bay Area Daylily Society, we stayed a few days longer and went to one of our favorite places, Wine Country. We were joined on our tastings by Curtis and Pat Montgomery of San Jose, CA. Here are the four of us, Lee, Jean, Pat and Curtis enjoying the wine and scenery of Sonoma Valley from Pezzi King Winery. Notice the yellow Labradors, so Jean was able to get her "fix" for the day.