Background history:

'Backseat Romance' is a dormant introduced in 2011 by Owen-P..

This plant can be found in our Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Backseat Romance') .

Please join in, if you own this plant! We would love to know more! I award an acorn for performance information posted to this thread.



Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Backseat Romance')

'Backseat Romance' has excellent vigor. And given room will readily form a 4' clump. Very good general northern hardiness and toughness. Without specifically tracking bud count, it does seem quite good. Scapes are quite good-- seems to easily achieve 4-way branching on good years. Have not actively checked for 5-way but I would not be shocked if it does produce some. Although blooms do occasionally open over top of each other, usually there is a smattering of blooms across the clump instead a thorough covering. Spent blooms are wet. I have not seen it rebloom (zone 5).

Bloom color and form consistency pretty good. Color can have a bit of a grape coloration to it, though amount of redness present can vary. Color clarity is quite good; every now and then will see a couple blotchies; vertical veining is noticeable; and blooms do dullen and lose some appeal with fading.

Petals have a thin trim edge of white. Whitewash of the eye ties nicely to the petal edging. Yellow to green throat is usually visually dominated by yellow though the green can be a nice adder, especially in the morning. At least some pleasingly pleated ruffling is usually present. Presentation of the petals is consistently quite flat with maybe a little recurve. Sepals consistently highly recurved. Overall it has a pleasing, though not particularly eye-popping, display.

This dl would be a good choice in the northern garden as a complimentary plant to neighboring attention-grabbing plants. A hybridizer could find several aspects of the bloom useful: whitewashed eye, petal trim edging, refined crimping and ruffling, flat petals, and color clarity-- especially considering the good plant and scape.

Wow, Dennis, great job on the detailed description! Thank you for taking the time. And that clump shot is beautiful!

I just added this plant to my collection and am wondering what to expect this year. I'm sure it will rebloom here as it's a similar climate to Paul Owen's place. Becky, I wonder if the semi-ev genes in it's parentage will help it persist in Florida...

Justine - Being a sev does not always mean it would well in the deep south, but it's certainly a beauty that a southern gardener would probably love to have!

I am afraid I haven't given Backseat Romance the ideal spot to shine since I received it in 2016. It is a pretty bloom and has gone from 2 fans to 15 fans. I put it in the back of the border because it was registered at 41 inches tall, but it seems to fall short of that, or else some of the other daylilies around it are taller than their registered height.

In this picture dated 7/3/20, I've circled in red the blooms of Backseat Romance. From left, it is surrounded by Hit the Road Jack (43"-with some scapes laying over to the right of BR), Cowboys Don't Cry (40" - pink/white bitone in back), Toby vs. Godzilla (38"), Regina Sitko (30" - what?!!, looks much taller), Van Gogh's Ear (36"-short peach), and in the very front of the picture About the People (38").


This picture shows a few scapes with branching. Again, I am afraid I haven't taken note of branching and bud count, but the scapes really stand up nicely. In 2018, I have pictures from 6/23 all the way through 8/25, which is a long bloom period, but no really great clump shots.


It does deserve a better spot in my garden.

Dennis616
I really loved reading such a detailed description, I need to learn from that example. I bookmarked your post as a great example of how to describe a daylily.

It looks and sounds like a wonderful cultivar!