Background history:

'Osterized' is a semi-evergreen tetraploid introduced in 1999 by Howard Hite and Judy Davisson. Judy is also known as "Davi" here on ATP! Check out her website for more of her beautiful daylily creations: http://www.picturetrail.com/da...

For more information, there is an article about Judy on Hemaholics Anonymous: http://hemaholicsanonymous.blo... as well as a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Juli started a thread here about Judy Davisson: The thread "ATP Series: The Daylilies of Judy Davisson" in Daylilies forum

Osterized is a mid-season bloomer that can produce numerous polymerous blooms. It has earned the Honorable Mention: 2005 AHS award. It is both pod and pollen fertile with 13 registered children: http://garden.org/plants/paren...

This plant can be found in the ATP Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Osterized') .

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.





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Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Osterized')

I bought this plant several years ago, largely on the basis of it supposedly being a polymerous daylily which was actually a tetraploid, such things being rare (at least at that time).

As with many "polymerous" daylilies, 'Osterized' proved to be something of a disappointment in that regard, at least in my garden. Over many years of observing it, I would say that it had polymerous blooms here maybe 1-2% of the time, at best. I got my plant from Judi Davisson, so it should have been the correct plant. I compared notes with Bill Maryott, who at the time was growing it in his fields (which get a lot more sun than my garden gets), and he said that he never noticed any polymerous blooms on his. (I bought one of his plants to verify this for myself.)

So as a polymerous daylily, 'Osterized' proved to be a bust - at least in my garden. (I suspect that there may be environmental factors at play wrt polymerous daylilies; I do not doubt that it performs better, as a poly, in other climates in other parts of the country.)

All of that said, 'Osterized' is still in my garden, despite not being polymerous, and not being a rebloomer.

I love the plant - not just the large fragrant blooms which always open well, but also the lovely deep green arching foliage. The foliage looks good from winter until late summer, when it starts dying back. I have never seen leaf streak on it. I only saw a tiny bit of rust on it, for the very first time ever, last year (when a great many other daylilies here had a great deal of rust on them (no, I do not spray for rust)).

The large blooms, as I said, always open well here, despite our cool evenings, and the scapes are strong enough to hold the blooms well above the foliage (but not absurdly or inappropriately so) without needing staking. I am generally not out in the garden until mid-morning, but I do have notes from last year that blooms on 'Osterized' were almost fully open at 6:47 am, after a particularly cool evening. Does this make it an EMO or a CMO? I don't know, but if I had to guess, I would say "yes". The blooms do seem to start opening the evening before. (I doubt that it is a nocturnal daylily; if so, it must have super-extended bloom, because the day's blooms are still in good shape come early evening, unlike certain registered nocturnal daylilies that I have had.)

The blooms are a lovely lemon yellow, and iirc they are lightly diamond dusted. I like yellow daylilies, and I like lemon yellow daylilies most of all - they are very cheerful, and fit well into the general garden. (I don't do monoculture.) I am a sucker for diamond dusting, so that (imho) is another plus.

The clump is reliably in bloom here from the last week of May, into the first week of July, giving me over a month of bloom. Once bloom begins, the clump is generally in bloom every day, except for the first few and last few days.

All of these traits: great foliage, large fragrant lemon flowers which open reliably and well (and early enough for me), held above the foliage on sturdy-enough scapes, make this a very good (if not great) daylily - good enough that I don't care that it doesn't rebloom, and that it rarely produces polys. It is, imho, highly deserving of its H.M. award. I look forward to its start of bloom every year, and I mourn when it comes to the last flower open. It certainly makes my "top 10" daylilies list, of those that (one way or another) I would scheme to take with me to a new house, or a desert island.

I would recommend this daylily to anyone.

Late edit (because I kept getting interrupted when I wrote the original post)... I forgot to mention hybridizing. 'Osterized' is pollen fertile but pod difficult, perhaps because of the long pistil. I *have* been able to set pods on it, with many tries. Bees seem to have no difficulty setting pods on it, though. Perhaps the trick is to get out there very early in the morning?

Polymerous,
I am really surprised that in your zone you do not get rebloom from this plant. I would have thought almost any daylily would rebloom in your zone. Do you have many that do not get rebloom there, is it rare for a daylily not to rebloom in your garden?

Little did I know when I registered this beautiful Howard Hite daylily that it would be so controversial. I was almost afraid to ask Howard for permission to register it because he was quite old and was wheelchair bound....and was quite cranky because he could no longer get down the hill to direct his daughter's hybridizing!!! And Gloria had warned me that Howard thought those daylilies that threw extra petals were "freaks". So I approached Howard with 3 blooms....one regular, one bloom with an extra sepal (which OSTERIZED does sometimes), and one 4 x 4 poly bloom making sure Howard smelled each bloom while I explained why I thought it should be registered. (10" tet unusual forms were pretty scarce back then, too....this was in 1999!) OSTERIZED is wonderfully fragrant. And then I waited a looooong anxious wait while Howard rolled all that information around and studied each bloom expecting him to yell at me at any moment. But he broke out into a HUGE grin with an enthusiastic "Ohhhhhhhh, I LIKE that" and graciously signed the registration papers. Exactly one year later, OSTERIZED took best in show at the Southern Michigan Daylily Club and Gloria drove home to get Howard and wheeled him into the show to show him "his" flower on the head table. It is, by far, my finest moment as a person who registers daylilies for others to enjoy. Howard passed away shortly after that knowing his program would go on. I hope someone cares enough about my work to "carry on" when I'm at that stage.

It was difficult registering OSTERIZED because the amount it polys is so variable. Almost all the poly blooms come all at once in the 2nd half of its bloom cycle. And it is the poly blooms that are the most fertile. The 5 x 5 poly blooms give enormous 5 celled seed pods that look like pumpkins! At the time, there were no (ZERO-NONE!) tetraploid polytepals (the term being used then) so nobody could give me guidance on whether to count those blooms with the extra sepal. The parent, GREEN DOLPHIN STREET, also throws that 7th segment. Since breeding for polymerous daylilies was in its infancy, it was recommended that you register ANY poly with their percentages....even if it were just 10 percent.....so that ones with low percentages could be identified by hybridizers interested in developing this "new" form. (This is not the current recommendation since polymerous daylilies must now be shown in the doubles class at shows....and I still get hate mail for having registered several with truthful stats)

I registered OSTERIZED at 50% which was the AVERAGE amount that it polyed in my Michigan, zone 5 garden. It polyed more than that clumped up with lots of water or rain, less than that in hot dry years and as line outs. (It's an unusual form 100% of the time so I personally think it should be shown in the UF section of exhibition shows). Show rules evolve over time, so I will not be going back to change the registration to accommodate people wanting to show it.....as the registration is correct reflecting how it grew in my garden. OSTERIZED took best in show in a Florida show before the rules changed, too...shown as a UF.

OSTERIZED will grow from Florida to Canada! But with that being said, I will confirm that the plant habit deteriorates in hot climates. I was horrified when I saw OSTERIZED in Dan Trimmer's and Pat Stamile's gardens.....the foliage was narrower and the scapes had lost some of their branching....and I understand it is an evergreen in Florida. It was a semi-evergreen in Michigan. It was looking closer to "normal" in a Florida garden where it was growing in mostly shade and was getting lots of water. It takes quite a long time to deteriorate in hot climates. I no longer grow OSTERIZED since I've moved to North Carolina, zone 7. It became a fraction of what it was in zone 5 and was clearly not happy here so I sent all that I had left back to Gloria Hite's Michigan garden. I miss growing it and will probably buy another plant from a northern garden and plant it in part shade here....it took about 10 years before it started looking sad. It's much better branched and performs better where it gets LOTS of winter.

I still grow a lot of OSTERIZED seedlings just for their fragrance and my own enjoyment. I never intended to register one of them until my daughter in law insisted I name a daylily for my grandkitty, so now we have MISTER BUTTERS, which grows better than OSTERIZED here. It has also won an honorable mention and was voted "best clump" during the Region 15 tour a few years ago.

OSTERIZED is what it is....and grows differently under different conditions. So thank you Mr. Polymerous for your very fair and accurate assessment of how it grows for you. Glad you like it so much. I think it was a pretty ground breaking daylily that pointed the way to new directions in both polys and unusual forms and I'll always have a special place in my heart for the person who hybridized it....Howard Hite!!

I had placed 'Osterized' on my want list but now thanks to your post I have removed it fearing it would not do well in my climate, thanks for that wonderful post.

Love your post about "Osterized" Judy. I've copied it to my notes so I can read it again from time to time. ;)

Wow, Judy, that was an awesome post! Such detailed information about any daylily cultivar is an unfortunate rarity.

OSTERIZED bloomed for the first time in my garden last summer. It was a new plant so although it had no polymerous blooms, the size, color and fragrance were all superb! I hope to experiment with hybridizing with it this summer. It is emerging this spring with LOTS of increase, so I imagine it will put on quite a show this year.

Thank you very much, Judy, for registering this wonderful plant, and giving us the story behind the registration, and a broader picture of regional performance. While 'Osterized' perhaps does not perform at its very best here, with respect to branching and budcount, I am nevertheless already looking forward to this season's bloom, which will begin in a little over 2 months from now.

Your post jogged me about the foliage; I can report that while the foliage does die back here, there always seems to be a few inches of it aboveground. (Even when I edited my original post, I got interrupted!)

That 'Osterized' rarely produces polymerous blooms here is not a slur on the plant, but rather part of an overall trend I have experienced with other polymerous daylilies (mostly diploids); they simply do not perform to as high a % of polymerous blooms in my zone 9 garden(s), as they have in their home garden.

What is the cause? I am sure there are many environmental reasons. I strongly believe that the amount of water the plant gets is a part of the picture, but by no means all of it. I suspect that the amount of sun/shade factors in, as well as day and nighttime temperatures when the blooms are forming. (Fwiw, I grow my 'Osterized' in a partly shaded raised bed, but as I said, it apparently also did not produce (m)any polys in Bill Maryott's full sun field.) One individual (sorry, I do not recall the name) who was on one of the paper poly Robins many years ago, felt that the amount of trace minerals in the soil was a factor.

I have personally witnessed one tetrapoloid cultivar, which was full of 4x4 poly blooms when I first saw it (in a pot) at a Sacramento area nursery, go to 1% poly blooms at best in my current garden, where it has bloomed for at least ten years. I have seen another tetraploid cultivar, which ran consistently around 50% poly in our last house, go to far less than that in our current house (where we have lived for fourteen years). In both cases, the plants in question are in different soil, and get more shade and probably less water than in their original situations; in the case of the first plant, there was also a move in excess of 100 miles southward. Similarly, I have a tet seedling which ran about 25% poly when I first removed it from my seedling bed and potted it. Most years since then, it has produced fewer polys than that (one year, 0%). The difference? Different soil, life in a pot (probably drier), and the pot is in a slightly shadier spot. Environmental conditions seem to be a tipping point for polymerous blooms, as well as other traits such as rebloom.

Finally, fwiw, it's 'Ms.' Polymerous, if you must assign a gender... otherwise 'Polymerous' or even (as they sometimes call me on the iris forum) 'Poly' is fine.

@Seedfork... Larry, I do not get rebloom on a lot of reblooming daylilies (but that is not true for all of them). To some extent that might be blamed on my casual approach to gardening (I am not fanatical about re-fertilizing during or after initial bloom), but that is not the entire story. As with poly blooms, I feel that rebloom (or not) is a function of genetics interacting with various environmental factors.

Some daylilies which consistently had a late summer to early fall rebloom at my old house, have not rebloomed here, despite additional fertilizer; I can only guess that the increased amount of shade they get here may (at least) be one factor, though I must truthfully also consider that irrigation amounts could also be a factor. ('Green Dolphin Street', which is the pollen parent of 'Osterized', is one of these, as is 'Bamboo Spitfire'.)

Some daylilies will occasionally throw out some rebloom scapes here, if they get extra fertilizer at/after initial bloom, but they are not dependable or consistent in this regard - though again, water restrictions could have played a role here. ('Newberry White Dove' and 'Pale Sun Rising' are two such daylilies; the former daylily gets full sun, so that should not be a factor in its rebloom behavior.)

Then there are those daylilies which consistently give some degree of late summer/early fall rebloom even if they *don't* get extra fertilizer (though additional fertilizer boosts the rebloom amount), and despite water restrictions and having to deal with a fair amount of shade. (These include 'One Fine Day' and 'Burmese Buddha'.)

If you were to talk to other daylily growers in the area, you may well get different answers. Most likely they are better about fertilizing than I am. Many of them may not have the same degree of shade in their gardens that I do. I am presuming that all of us are suffering equally under water restrictions, but that may not be the case - other people may have smaller gardens which allow them to focus their irrigation on the daylilies.

It is what it is, and I really have no complaints about sparse rebloom. Some daylilies, like 'Osterized', are worth the garden space, regardless. IMHO.

Judy, I met Howard Hite, many, many years ago, before he was wheelchair bound and He showed me around his gardens. I purchased an older daylily from him, Satin Silk, which I still have to this day.

Hemlady,
It would still be in my garden too, if it does as well as it looks in this photo!
Satin Silk:

That's a very good pic of it. It probably does better in the north I imagine.

You will find that as new forms arise from the genome in tetraploid daylilies that it does take some time for the form to stabilize. Stabilization seems to be easier in diploids. It is a mystery why something "new" suddenly appears. For instance, many tetraploid doubles first appeared in many gardens all at once from a single bloom x another single bloom cross. And the first tetraploid doubles bloomed double only part of the time. But then it was a straight forward path for hybridizers to take one of these double daylilies and cross it with a double that appeared in another hybridizer's garden or cross it with a converted diploid double which stabilized the form in tetraploids and produced the wonderful 100% tet doubles that we see today.

Hybridizing for polymerous daylilies has been a rockier road for the reasons you mention, Ms. Poly (Yes, I DO tend to give everyone a title....even my daylilies....DOCTOR HANDSOME, MISTER MAYOR, MISS DEMEANOR to name a few!!!

There seems to be not only a genetic component in hybridizing for polys, but also an environmental "trigger" that allows that genetic component to be expressed. So I'm not at all offended when someone tells me that OSTERIZED does not poly for them or polys less than registered as that is a problem that occurred regularly in early polymerous hybridizing and still exists in many registered as polymerous today. The form is still quite unstable but is really improving on the diploid level. The original purchase price on OSTERIZED was $75, which I refunded to someone who said it NEVER polyed. A year later that person sheepishly return the price of the plants saying it was polying like crazy and she would feel really guilty keeping the refund. So originally, I thought that OSTERIZED just needed to be clumped up to do it's poly thing. But that is not the case....there are apparently other factors.

It is a mystery what environmental factors affected the early polys. It has been speculated that it might be a micro-nutrient, the amount of water given, weather, or a combination of things, but there are environmental factors. It leads to a lot of frustration for those working with and registering polys as it increases the number of years that you have to evaluate a seedling dramatically.....the poly buds have to be counted every year for at least 5 years and then averaged....and that gets very tedious. I moved a high percentage poly that I've owned for years to the other side of my yard recently so that I would remember to count those buds and now the dang thing isn't throwing ANY poly buds. There is a Goldner daylily, CARRICK WILDEN, that mysteriously throws a LOT of poly blooms every 3rd year. I had a Goldner seedling at one time that also did that.....lots of poly blooms but only every 3rd year. Why not every year??? What's up with THAT???? There is so much to be learned yet about the nature of polymerous blooms and I am not a scientist who can adequately explain some of things I've noticed.

With the absence of any other tetraploid poly to use at the time, I crossed OSTERIZED with every daylily I was growing and a few tet conversions, such as Tet MOUNTAIN TOP EXPERIENCE that were known to poly occasionally. I did not get any high percentage polys from that effort. But I did find that OSTERIZED increased the size of every bloom I crossed it with and produced the extra large and extra tall unusual forms that I was also aiming at. It gave marvelously strong scapes and passed along its fragrance and a bit of motion to the dozen or so direct introductions that I got from it. IMHO, for a daylily that now sells for $8 to $10, it's worth using in a hybridizing program even if you can't give it ideal conditions, Larry. It passes along a lot of bells and whistles including that early morning opening habit that Ms. Poly likes, fragrance, great substance, and northern hardiness. The blooms on OSTERIZED open sometime during the night and go into their deadhead phase also sometime in the middle of the night (guessing around 3 am) which is becoming quite common in my line. I LIKE having my daylilies wide open and ready for viewing early in the morning and lasting all day rain or shine! Some of the OSTERIZED kids.....MEAN GREEN, CHICKEN DANCE, LEAN GREEN FRAGRANCE MACHINE, EARLY SHIFT, HEROES ON HORSEBACK, REDHEADED HUSSY, POLLY ESTHER, BETTY SPAGHETTI, BOY CRAZY....quite a diversified group. I'm now working with the grandchildren of OSTERIZED, but none of them are high percentage polys. OSTERIZED did tend to give a lot of yellows that were low percentage polys like POLLY ESTHER....I still grow some of those but threw most away.

Hybridizing for tet polys is indeed a very rocky road and I applaud anyone working on it! I may have missed on that high percentage poly tet UF I was dreaming of, but I have a yard full of extra large, extra tall daylilies now that smell wonderful thanks to using OSTERIZED in my early hybridizing career. And if anyone else produces a wonderful tet poly UF, I'll be the first to buy it to cross with the OSTERIZED grandkids!!!

Back a few months ago when a few people were trying to come up with a way to get more comments about daylilies posted who would have ever guessed we would get great results like this. With the great work Dave has done and with the efforts of Becky and Jon what a great feature this Daylily of the Day has turned into, I think it was Dogs and Daylilies who posted the first post that eventually lead to this and the info is already great, and as other posts continue over time to be added this will be a fantastic source for daylily info. When Dave gets everything moved over to The New National Gardening Association site, I can just imagine the hits posts like these past few will draw.
OK, so I may put Mister Butters on my list, just to remind me of someone who gives everyone a title. For those who are interested I see Shady Rest Gardens has Osterized for $15.00 and Mister Butters for $20.00.

@Davi It's very kind of you to share your hybridizing experience's with all of us. Daylily genetics are complicated. I appreciate the wonderful information and history you shared with everyone.
I'll forgive you for adding to my want list. Mister Butters is too cute.

Larry, Your so bad! You just had to enable the weak, didn't you.

This has been a wonderful read, and thanks to everyone -- especially Davi -- for taking the time to provide all this interesting information. I've often wondered what causes some daylilies to poly at times, and some more frequently (like my TUTANKHAMUN) than others.

Great info!

I have had Osterized in my garden for about five years it does very well here in zone 4. I will have to pay attention this year to check for poly blooms. Guess that tells you I have lots of daylilies and am not always as observant each and every day. I do love the clump when it is in bloom.

I also copied Judy's information in a file and will read it when I have some extra time.

I hadn't planned on posting a review yet since I only got this in 2021. But it has impressed me so much this year, I decided to go ahead with a review.

Osterized is still only 3 fans strong, but I have 3 scapes this year and each bloom has been beautiful so far. And it is VERY fragrant because I can smell it from a few feet away and reminds me of honeysuckle.

Then today, I got a 5x5 poly!



I've read the other reviews and am so grateful to Judy for all the details about it. I can only imagine how proud she and Howard were when it won best in show. Being in between Michigan and Florida, I am hoping that branching and bud count will be more on the higher side, but mine is still settling in, so they are at 2 branches with about 10-12 buds. Scape height is also not up to the registered 30 inches yet.

Because of the fragrance and Judy's comment about the 5x5 blooms being more fertile, I decided to cross it with Seminole Wind this morning (one of the very few other tets I have blooming this morning). I am hoping to see those pumpkin sized pods!

This year, one of the OSTERIZED kids, MEAN GREEN won the President's Cup at the AHS National convention and made the front cover of the Journal. I'm probably the only one who noticed the 4 X 4 poly bloom in the photo….thank you Howard!! It was a reminder of how I began my journey.

Congratulations, Judy! Mean Green is a gorgeous looking plant. I will have to take another look at that picture, because I missed the poly.

Osterized has a lot of nice looking kids. I have Mister Butters and love it.