TODAY IN THE GARDEN

The seedlings in the west seedling bed are mostly older ones, from 2013 seed. (There are also a few later volunteer seedlings that got jammed into that bed.)

Some of the seedlings bloomed last year, most did not. Some of the unbloomed seedlings got rust and were yanked; some of them were weak and died.

Earlier this year, one particular seedling caught my eye. It was apparent that this seedling was especially vigorous, because it towered over everything else in that seedling bed, with huge foliage. What was bad was that the foliage, instead of arching nicely, stood upright like a bunch of small swords. Since I can't stand upright foliage (I consider it a fault, even if the flowers manage to bloom above it), I mentally marked the seedling for removal. (In retrospect, looking at the parents, I should have been able to foresee this flaw. Both of them have foliage which, while it arches, also has a bit of a spikey nature to it. It seems that Some Spikey + Some Spikey = Spikey in Spades.)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Parents of The Monstrosity: 'Hip to Be Square' x 'Ballerina on Ice'

Fast forward some months, the seedling was still in the bed (because I had more urgent garden chores to do than to root it out), still dominating everything else. In fact, it was the only healthy looking seedling in the entire bed, which for a moment had me theorizing that this monstrosity (as I had started thinking of it) had sent out underground roots that were vampirically sucking all the water and nutrients away from the other seedlings. That, of course, was not the case (I don't think). While we did find a reason why everything else looked so puny (something had chewed holes in the drip irrigation, such that the water was spraying out rather than being delivered to each seedling), that didn't explain why this creature was so robust.

So chalk up one for The Monstrosity's health and vigor and ability to withstand drought.

By now, it was getting closer to bloom season, and I had developed a sort of morbid fascination with this seedling, wondering what kind of flower it would produce. (The goal was something that would be a Cold Morning Opener with some percentage of polymerous blooms, but I didn't have really high hopes there.) So I decided to give it a reprieve (since, after all, I could not use its space until after we had reworked the whole bed).

Soon a scape appeared, and as I watched it grow, I found another reason to dislike the seedling. The scape was thick! In fact, it reminded me of another daylily which I had years ago, which was named 'Scapes From Hell' for its hugely thick scapes. (If I recall correctly, the hybridizer likened them to broom handles. That was an exaggeration, but they were certainly thick.)

But then it got worse, because some cracks appeared in the scape! (No matter what you may think about upright foliage or thick scapes, in nobody's book is scape cracking anything but a flaw.) I resigned myself to watching the scape fall apart in slow motion, as it were, but somehow it didn't happen. The scape held together, and kept growing, and branching, and producing more buds. It slowly dawned on me that in those respects, it was a particularly good scape (compared to most (if not all) other seedlings that I have grown here). Eventually it grew to have 5-way branching with about 28 buds, which is quite respectable for our latitude. (It is hard to predict an accurate bud count when the buds are so tiny and nascent, and you don't want to go poking and prodding, because they can easily break off at that tender age. Such early bud counting also doesn't take into account the possibility of bud-building, which is a trait some daylilies have; in such cases the scape keeps producing buds over a long time (something which I have yet to witness).)

But wait, there's more. Very shortly, a second scape appeared form the same fan! Or at least, it appeared to be from the same fan. (Sometimes daylilies will be preparing to put out a new fan, and the scape for that new fan will precede the fan itself. Or so I've been told. I'm still trying to get a handle on that.)

If the second scape was indeed from the same fan, then that meant that this seedling had a still relatively rare trait known as "instant rebloom", which is when the daylily puts up a rebloom scape before the first scape finishes blooming (or, in this case, before the first scape even starts blooming). This is a valuable trait for colder northern gardens, where the season is so short that daylilies with a long rest between initial bloom and rebloom are effectively once-only bloomers, because cold weather, one way or another, either freezes the scape or else prevents the blooms from opening. Since the pod parent of this seedling, 'Hip to Be Square', has sometimes demonstrated instant rebloom in my garden, that seemed to be the best bet as to what was going on.

So The Monstrosity now had 3 good things going for it: health and vigor, good budcount and branching, and instant rebloom, versus three bad things: a thick scape, scape-cracking, and the horrid upright foliage. (About this time, some of the foliage started to fold over, but not in a graceful arch. Such leaves which did not remain upright, sort of kinked over, not attractively.)

So there was more reason to be interested in the bloom. Would it be good, or bad? Would it be worth trying to hybridize the bad traits out of this seedling, or should I just write the whole thing off as yet another loss?

The unfolding drama of this seedling has been holding my attention, and today was finally the day of maiden bloom.

Why am I not surprised that the bloom was not particularly attractive?

I do have to say that I was a bit surprised by the bloom color. I was expecting some kind of pale peach or apricot, though I suppose genetically speaking, the cream or pale yellow of the bloom should have been a predictable possibility. I actually don't mind the color at all, so in that sense matters could be worse. (Some daylily people, on the other hand, would count any shade of yellow as a Strike Four.)

But the form! One petal tongue-ing! And those awful sepals! They should be recurved!

But since the weather is still cold, maybe the blooms will improve and open better as things warm up. One can hope.

Somehow I already find myself strategizing as to what I could cross The Monstrosity with, to keep its virtues while improving or eliminating its flaws. I have a cream seedling which was a volunteer out of 'Sacrament of Healing' which has good bloom opening. I have two new plants with excellent rust resistance which could also be used, although maybe not this year.

Hmmm...

 

~*~*~

There are other things in bloom in the garden now, which are as interesting as and mostly prettier than The Monstrosity's bloom. Here are a few of them.

Bloom on the Tall Bearded Iris 'Glacier Blush'

This is one of the irises on the pool steps. Compared to certain other blindingly bright irises blooming near it, the color seems somewhat insipid. It would do better away from them, paired with something that would harmonize with the pale colors of the bloom.

Slightly damaged bloom on the Tall Bearded Iris 'Passionate Kisses'

This is another potted iris, on the opposite side of the pool steps. This one might make a good pairing for 'Glacier Blush'.

Backlit clump of the Tall Bearded Iris 'Sweet Musette'

This is one of Alyssa's irises. I have two large drifts of it. Last year I dug and gave away several to the iris club, and threw several more tiny increases out. There are still a great many rhizomes of this left, so many that not all of them can bloom, because of the crowding. I guess I will have to thin them out some more.

Bloom on Rosa 'Lady Emma Hamilton'

This is the Graham Thomas rose that Alyssa picked out. It has lovely orange-ish blooms with a somewhat citrus-y scent, on a humongous shrub.

 

 

'Today in the Garden' is sporadically updated per the whim of the author, and depending on what is actually going on in the Garden

Clickor the archive of past entries

copyright 2017, all rights reserved