Northern hardy purple tetraploid daylilies are available in a wide variety of off true purple colors. There are, however, some nearer true purple
tetraploid daylilies. What do you consider your best? Attached are picture of mine.

Not a tetraploid but rather a diploid, and it is quite purple. It grows like crazy for me.

'Rhythm and Hues'

My best for color was Purple Kaboom, followed by Velvet Ribbons, which is actually an evergreen I think, but always grew well
here for me. Beyond Thunderdome was nice, as was Webster's Purple Wonder. My only problem with Webster's Purple Wonder
was that it was very slow to increase, and buds were concentrated at the top- which meant that they intertwined when they
opened yes, but spent flowers created a real mess. Velvet Ribbons might be considered too dark for it to be purple, but I do
call it purple. Michael Bennett was another nice purple. Some of my seedlings might actually show as being red in a photo,
but in real life, I just call them 'purple'.


Velvet Ribbons


seedling


seedling


seedling out of Michael Bennett


seedling


seedling


seedling

Bela Lugosi. Huge flowers

I would like to see examples of what you consider true purple vs. ones that aren't. I think that's one of those things where you can ask 4 different people and get 6 different thoughts on it. Also, a comment, I find for truer purple it's a good idea to place them where they can get about three hours of shade, especially morning shade. It cuts back on their performance, but you get it back in truer purple in the shade, I feel.

Galileo from Paul Owens over at Slightly Different Nursery is a nice tet purple that blooms well for me (5A, plenty cold).

Looks like this on a cloudy day.


Can look more like this on sunny days:


Here are two sister seedlings. One to me is more of a true purple and one is not exactly what I call purple... maybe violet, thinking back to my box of 64 crayolas as a kid.

Seedling one:


Seedling two:


I know we exchanged tree mails last summer. Are those seedlings the kind of purple you are looking for?

Karol Emmerich has many excellent purples . SOLI DEO GLORIA comes to mind.

From central KY Zone 6b

Land of Our Fathers





Nordic Night




Intense Silence


Cameroon Night


Respighi



I am not a professional photographer, and as you can see, shadows affect colors!
I, however, consider Intense Silence and Respighi more of a deep wine color.

Getting airborne is a hardy true purple

Raven's Song

Purples in my yard E Central WI, Z5A

Black Wolf


Buddy's Vampire Lady


Greg Trotter


Absolute Ripper


Humungousaur


Larry's Twilight Bite


Men in Black


Spacecoast Chomp! Chomp!


Thistles and Thorns


Bonibrae Witches and Warlocks


Cyberhawk


Razor Sharp

Wow, those are super beautiful purples, Ed!

Tim, your seedlings are very gorgeous, too!

Ginny G where are you?

Charley

I was thinking of hardy mini or small purples, realizing that the big and tall ones seem to get much more attention.

INDIAN GIVER is a semi-evergreen and embodies purple for me. Wonder how it would do...



Also a dip and SEV is the bigger, branchy PURPLE MANY FACES


And especially, PURPLE PAWPRINT, a dormant mini that I bought from the north and reblooms well here in 7a.

@Mainer35, I see you asked about tets! Here I am being an ambassador for dips. Reminds me of being in school and not reading the test instructions thoroughly... and particularly like that trick test that we got once where it told us at the top of the test instructions to read the whole thing before starting, and then the very last instruction was to only do something tiny, like put your name on the page. And all the students who hadn't gotten the clue were working away for ages at the many questions. So the instruction-readers were watching the impulsive ones work, and feeling smug. Strangely, I don't remember which of the two groups I was in. Maybe I was in-between. Saw something was going on and figured it out? It's been a while...

And I imagine Judy Davisson's marvelous purples might do well up there, if you can get your hands on them.

A few nice purple Tets in my 6a garden are

Kansas City Kicker
This one is not actually purple but the very purple eye and edge take up most of the flower




Snaggle Tooth




Bettylen, verging on Fuschia but still purplish




Storm Shelter
This one goes through cycles of good year/ bad year but the flower is dynamite

Royal Decroum has been great here for me, but more of a Violet Purple. Absolute Ripper has been great for me as Ed mentioned above as wel.

I see a lot of purples on this thread that are red purple in my climate. In my experience, the more sun and the higher the temps, the more likely purples will show red tones. Also, most digital cameras and phone cameras add blue tones to photos that make them look like truer purples.

The truest Northern purples I grow are Emmerichs:

Faith that Moves Mountains


Soli deo Gloria (94-degree day)


Reckless Girls is close to a true purple when night temps are 70 or below.


Some of my Southern purples and seedlings stay looking truer purple even when temps are in the 90s.

Midnight Castle


Jeanne Deaver's Dream


I have three seedlings that keep their true purple colors in the late season heat:

One purple tetraploid I've always liked strictly based on color is Paul Voth (Griesbach-Klehm 2008). I can't attest to it's northern hardiness since I've only grown it in NC, but I would imagine it's northern hardy since it was bred and propagated in Wisconsin.


Check out this article about Dr. Griesbach and the naming of Paul Voth. https://magazine.uchicago.edu/...