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Oscie became confused when reading his notebook to write this registration. The cross in the notebook says T. Yebit X ? Lahaina.

Yebit = sdlg x Zenar, so when he wrote on the registration papers "(Tet. Yebit x (seedling x Zenar)) X Lahaina he was being redundant.

I have made a close study of Oscie's garden notebooks. His list of selections shows the cross to be the opposite of what he registered. It's seedling x SEDALIA

Great vigor, excellent plant habit, distinctive flower. These are the hallmarks of Whatley breeding. This one also makes nice kids.

The name comes from its top branching. Oscie was gratified to see that the blossoms from those crowded buds don't collide.

One Saturday morning I went to see Oscie and handed him a list of names I'd brainstormed over breakfast. He laughed at the impossibility of using the more daring ones, but he later used several on that list: TIPPECANOE, TYLER TOO, SAY GOOD MORNING, PERFIDIA. He thought of Tippecanoe as his clearest pink. It makes a vigorous plant that will increase well in shade and with maple roots in the soil.

Parentage is (NEBO X TET FAIRY TALE PINK) X "Fusion? A of I" as the notebook reads. "A of I" is Kehl's AGE OF INNOCENCE, which Oscie was using. There may have been doubt at the time he put a cross tag on the scape. Instinct played a large part in seedling identification, because Oscie trusted his sense about plants more than he trusted his writing, when he could see it. I can see Age of Innocence as a likely pollen parent when I look at how Tarta opens. Fusion kids don't open this way, as far as I have seen. Tarta passes its round form along to the kids in addition to a lively, sometimes silvery, character to the colors.

I believe Oscie mistakenly dug a sibling along with the flagged plant of THRESHOLD TO BLUE and never realized it. In the summer he died (2005) he focused his limited energy and garden time on plant identification. THRESHOLD TO BLUE had gone missing to squirrel thievery of the label or labels. After his death, when I mapped his garden for future liquidation, I saw the new labels he had made that summer. Two plants in different locations were labeled THRESHOLD TO BLUE. Indeed, they bear a strong resemblance when viewed on a hot day after lunch time, which is when I suspect Oscie made his final ID.

With the family's permission, I collected both plants and grew them in separate locations of my garden. The following spring it was clear that one was tender and the other hardy. One didn't open well, the tender one, and the other not only opened well, but took my breath away. I wrote about these two plants on the AHS email robin and heard from two people who suspected they had bought the "wrong" TTB from a vendor. One of these people sent me his plants for comparison. They emerged tender, along with the bogus TTB, and he directed me to destroy them. The incorrect TTB may still be in commerce. It doesn't bring a good price, because it doesn't deserve it. The real TTB will someday be sent to the people who got the wrong plant, once I have enough stock. Oscie treasured this daylily, rightly so.

When established and grown in full sun in zone 6, ROSE IMPACT displays a well-branched scape with more than 20 buds. This was "love at first sight" for me when I saw it as a seedling in Oscie's garden. He was hesitant to register it because he disliked veining. I begged him for a piece whether he registered it or not, so I was using it a year before he named it. The pod parent seedling came from SEDALIA X "J-37," a tet conversion of a seedling he had grown from the last seed crop of his late friend, Jim McKinney of Louisiana (d. 1979). Thus, the large-flowered parents behind the demure ROSE IMPACT, which resembles its pollen parent, Tet. SILOAM APPLE BLOSSOM in size and form, account for the occasional whopper that can come from ROSE IMPACT breeding. (See my MOM'S MIRTH).

Nothing definitive can be said about the parentage of RAM. A close study of Oscie's garden notebooks and his price lists shows a portrait of uncertainty and doubt about what seemed a sure-fire identification. The initial record of seedling #4675 is LAHAINA X TET. SILOAM HAROLD FLICKINGER. This ID was based on a map of the seedling bed. But as he studied the flower, he doubted his identification. His "garden intelligence" told him the seedling he would name RAM was more likely a child of FRED HAM, which he was using at the time those seeds were produced. He knew there were opportunities for mistakes in moving germinated seedlings from the cold frame out into the garden beds, but once seedlings were in the beds, he made a map of the rows. (Crosses were not planted in any order in the cold frame, and packets of the same cross were not consolidated into one place in the cold frame or the seedling bed.) He realized that his flimsy plastic cross markers could be removed by squirrels or deteriorated by UV rays. So he trusted his instincts over the shaky reliability of plastic markers in the ground.

In the year he hybridized RAM, he used FRED HAM with three pollen parents, one of which was "unknown." He surmised that the unknown pollen was his seedling #3240 from CALEDONIA X TET. CARONDELET. Seedling 3240 was exceptional in that he kept it in the garden for a longer time than usual and hardly used it as a parent. He announced its introduction in the year 2000 under the name NOTHING VENTURED, but then never registered it and may not have released any plants.

Tracing the ancestry of PINK FANFARE is complicated by uncertainties in Oscie's mind as he made entries in his garden book. For example, he uses the code HLW inexplicably for ATLANTA ANTIQUE SATIN in 1981, the year before it was registered with AHS. It's right there in the notebook.

((Lahaina x Atlanta Antique Satin) x Kimmswick) X Sedalia.

Sedalia = (Kanani? x (? x My Belle)) X "S-12"
S-12 was one of a set of Edna Spalding seedlings he bought in her garden and converted.

Oscie was a big fan of Spalding color. When talking about PINK FANFARE he attributed its quality of color to the Spalding seedling behind Sedalia.

PASTOR JAMES is the lesser sibling to the celebrated BUTTER CREAM.

I found this to be a difficult pod-setter except with using "stud pollen" such as from TARTA or SHERRY LANE CARR.

Sunfast and rain-defying in St. Louis, MOHICAN CHIEF was Oscie's idea of a great red daylily for the Midwest. It passes great color on to its kids.

Those who see MAPLE HUES open flat should race for their camera and grab a picture! In my experience, this one is not a good opener. However, the color value in zone 6 is so high that it can be situated in a perennial border where a bold color accent from a distance is what the gardener desires. It is one of my favorite polychrome daylilies despite the way it tends to open.

Oscie told me he sold very little of LABADIE. It was eclipsed by the popularity of the "Candy" series by Patrick Stamile.

Oscie had a form of dyslexia that interfered with accurate spelling as well as connecting sounds heard with their transcription to a notebook. I deduced this during our friendship and during my close study of his garden notebooks after he died. He realized after he registered this daylily that "Gage" should be spelled "Gauge," but he never corrected the registration.

Oscie didn't have any spare garden space at home, but he grew KEWANEE as a permanent member of his best bed at the insistence of his wife, Dorothy. KEWANEE is named for a Missouri town. It is pictured and favorably mentioned in R.W. Munson's 1989 book "Hemerocallis: The Daylily."

When established, GREEK EFFECT makes a "parasol" clump enhanced by its reliable rebloom in St. Louis. It has great plant habit and is easily pod fertile.

I acquired GLIBBER MANNER in the fall one year and lost it over the winter in University City, Missouri, zone 6. It's unusual that a Whatley cultivar would succumb in the zone it was bred in, but I suppose summer stress could be part of the answer.

Oscie recommended FUSION highly for its ability to open well on cool mornings. It became one of his favorite parents after 2000. The color of FUSION is variable, sometimes looking near-white, sometimes a glowing melon pink.