Becky, I admire your dedication and hard work to the Daylily of the Day series. Thank you so much for all the research you do on each of the featured daylilies!
I don't have Sexy Sally (although I would LOVE to know where that name came from
), I read with interest the articles about Darrel Apps. In the Horticulture magazine link, Darrel talks about spent blooms falling off on their own:
"Lastly, when the flower is finished, it shouldn’t make a mess. But many gorgeous ones do, melting over the buds below and making it harder for those flowers to open properly. (People devoted to these plants go out every morning and deadhead individual blossoms, but who among us non-Hemerocallis-heads needs yet another garden chore?) This nasty habit, says Apps, will eventually be eliminated with good breeding. There are plenty of fine daylilies today whose spent flowers neatly roll up “into little dry, cigarettes” that drop off of their own accord. - See more at:
http://www.hortmag.com/plants/...
I never thought about breeding that trait out of daylilies! Spent blooms falling off on their own without making a mess on other daylilies? And what about hybridizing? Would you want a spent bloom to fall off immediately? It just made me wonder about it.
