Viewing comments posted by mbouman

FROST AVENUE represents a weave of human connections between an East Texas fellow in St. Louis (Oscie Whatley), and the best of Durio, Spalding, Monette, and Jim McKinney (a friend), along with his friend Van Sellers in North Carolina. Going back through Oscie's garden notebooks, I reconstructed the parentage as far back as I could:

The parents were 3011 X (T) 2622, which was a conversion of a Whatley seedling. Those parents break out to:

("Pink" x (? x My Belle)) X (((Spalding violet seedling "S.V." x Iron Gate Ice Berg) x Little Infant) x McKinney seedling WH1)

Oscie obtained the cast-off Spalding violet seedling in the Spalding garden. He exchanged plants with Jim McKinney in the 1970s. McKinney passed away in 1979. Oscie seems to have received some of McKinney's last seeds and germinated them in St. Louis. WH1 was used extensively, as was the Spalding violet seedling. I think Oscie had a strong fellow-feeling for McKinney, as he made a drawing from a photograph of McKinney hybridizing a daylily, and put that drawing on the cover of his price list in 1998, a touching memento of a friendship twenty years after it ended.

Oscie liked to find names for daylilies on the Missouri map, following the lead of his mentor, the nurseryman, Will Dill (Winner of the Stout Medal for "Renee"), who had chosen the name "Solo" from the map for a registration of Charles "Doc" Branch. Dill was a nurseryman in St. Louis in the 1960s and he would make final selections in Doc Branch's garden and choose names. Oscie's place names include Femme Osage, Kimmswick, Ozora, Caledonia, Carondelet, Frost Avenue and Etzkorn (street names).

Before he died in 2005, Oscie Whatley told me "take everything to Deliberate Pace!" This plant is a grandchild of Tet. Super Purple, which I think explains why it will throw intense red orange kids even when crossed with unsuspecting melon yellow blends.

DAVID AND ALAN has proven to have some tenderness problems in unprotected places exposed to sub-zero temperatures. It survives near the shore of Lake Champlain in Vermont, zone 5a, but died a few miles inland, zone 4. It has survived in a zone 4 garden in Iowa. It died in Wichita, KS during a sub-zero period. It thrives in Maryland, zone 6 or 7, and naturally, its behavior is exemplary in St. Louis, where it was bred. It is a wonderful parent, increases by proliferations on established scapes, and seems to reward full-sun placement with vigorous growth and very showy bloom. I'm very proud of it, despite the tenderness in frigid places.