Today's Best Daylilies

This is a post about blue and orange.  I've declared them today's colors.  Pictured above is Mort Morss's KARELIA, photographed this morning around 8 am.  I love the proportions of this flower face, the size of the blue eye with respect to the size of the petals, the width of the sepals, and the beautiful way the flower opens itself for viewing.

Here's another blue-eyed one I like a lot, Patrick Stamile's BLUEBIRD BUTTERFLY.  I prefer the more creamy background color of KARELIA.  Some days, the creamy custard color of BLUEBIRD BUTTERFLY shows more of a near-white look, and I like it better.  This photo shows the various shades of blue and violet in the eye.  I had never noticed this pattern in previous years of growing it.  Nice!

Here's a new favorite.  It's a seedling sent here for testing by my Bay-Area friend, Subhana Ansari.  The delicacy of these clean colors thrills me.  No, it didn't rain today.  In my haste to water this bed, I forgot to take the pictures until the sprinkler had made a few passes.

 

Now here's one that is "blue" only by inference.  It's Frank Smith's BUBBLING UP, the result of crossing the black-eyed off-white CRAZY IVAN with the blue-eyed creamy flower, BLUEGRASS MUSIC.

I am only crossing this with blue-eyed mates.  I want to see if I can get something this bold in blue and white tones, as there are a gazillion off-white daylilies with black purple eyes and edges already on the market.

Now to the color orange.  I find orange a source of visual refreshment in the garden.  There are some fabulous modern daylilies with orange backgrounds and red or reddish eyes.  Here is Dan Trimmer's punning TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD.  "Hey, Boo!"  I love the ruffles and that jazzy eye,

Dan has introduced loads of great orange daylilies.  I'd love to try them all!  Here is his PORT ORANGE, named for a Florida coastal town northeast of Enterprise, where Dan lives.

There is so much going on with this flower in addition to its size and its ruffles.  The bright green throat is politely outlined in red orange.  I love that it has always opened this flat before I'm outside to check the garden.

Equally impressive to my eye is Frank Smith's MATTHEW KASKEL.  This is a big flower that's always perfectly flat when I walk out before breakfast.

 

Finally, back to blue.  This is Ted Preuss's BLUEGRASS MEMORIES, a fabulous dark purple flower with a dusty blue eye and edge.  I had no idea it had this exceptional beauty from the pictures I'd seen.  My Nikon D5000 digital SLR has a sensor that has proven exceptionally good with blue and purple tones.  The color below is exactly what I saw in the garden this morning.

Kathy and I grow about 800 varieties, which is too many by several hundred.  She asked me tonight at dinner if I ever discard a daylily.  I said my aim is to keep eliminating all but the best, like BLUEGRASS MEMORIES.  She was prompted to ask by the large number of creamy yellow daylilies that don't interest her or offend her sense of protocol.

Here's one we both love to hate.  I have a big clump of it and I will decline to name it here.  Those of you who grow it will recognize it at once!  This is a showstopping daylily on the days when it doesn't zipper itself closed.  It has a heavy ruffled edge, you see, but lacks the genetic programming to make the flower pop open despite the busy convolutions of the edges.  As a consequence, of the three days it has been in bloom so far, I'd rate it poor, poor, and impossible.  This will not stay here much longer.  I keep it for breeding because it turns out that the offspring don't inherit this problem.