Background history:

'Black Plush' is a evergreen diploid introduced in 1955 by Connell. No further information known about this hybridizer except that there are 330 registered cultivars under the name.

Black Plush is a mid-season bloomer.It has earned the Honorable Mention: 2003 AHS award. It is listed as both pod and pollen fertile with currently 51 registered children: https://garden.org/plants/pare...

This plant can be found in the NGA Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Black Plush') .

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 'Black Plush')

I planted Black Plush in the fall of 2016 and hope to see blooms in 2017. Is that unrealistic??

Sorry but my computer deleted many photos and Black Plush must have been one of them. I do recall loving the depth of color.

Black Plush is a very hardy evergreen in my zone and it increases fairly well. It blooms early here, is pod and pollen fertile and blooms for a decent length of time. Hope to always have this one in my garden. I will see how it does in zone 4 next year as I am taking it with me when I move.

I added this one in late 2015. It had been on my want list for a long time. It did increase and I did have bloom this year. I just love the color Of Black Plush. I moved it this fall to a spot where it will really have the chance to shine......I hope! It was an early one for me also. Blooming in mid-June. I will give it more time to settle in before I know how accurate the stats are for me.

Carol ( @csandt ), that is not unrealistic to expect at all. Claudia, I'm sure you will love it!

As others have said, this is an early bloomer and it's really pretty...its color gives off the effect of glowing embers. Here is a picture of it in my 5b garden:



I also get a fairly high incidence of poly blooms on black plush for some reason (even though it isn't considered a poly), which is pretty neat. I'm not sure if it's weather-related or not, but whatever it is, it seems to only impact my Black Plush, so if you get excited about an extra petal or two on a daylily bloom, Black Plush is likely to give you that.

I also find Black Plush's form to be rather appealing. It's an older bloom and looks like the older spider forms, but the fact that it's near-black instead of orange or yellow makes it appear more modern than it is.

Black Plush is a good pollen parent, but a rather poor pod parent for hybridizing.

Interesting point of note: I won a best in category (small blooms) award at a local show for Black Plush one year.

Overall: I would definitely recommend Black Plush to anyone interested in unusual form daylilies, dark daylilies, or even just daylilies in general. It isn't in my list of top five favorites in my garden, but it is definitely a daylily that I don't intend to get rid of.


Edited to fix a naming mishap on my part.

I've had "Black Plush" for many years. I love this daylily for it's color, form and overall performance. Throughout the years I've added hundreds of daylilys and took many out for different reasons. But "Black Plush" will always be a keeper for me.

About 25 years ago I attended a regional meeting in Northern California, and one of the tour gardens was at the Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux in Vina, near Chico. One of the resident monks was an AHS member and enthusiast, and had used daylilies to great effect in the landscape. Unfortunately, the tour commenced around noon on a 105º day, and on almost every daylily, even the pastels, the flowers had collapsed and were hanging like wet tissue. Amidst this daylily tour disaster, Black Plush was standing tall, holding both substance and color, with a velvety finish which made an impression on everyone who saw it. I've grown it ever since, and it never disappoints.

Can anyone say how this compares to American Revolution in performance or color?

Frillylily said:Can anyone say how this compares to American Revolution in performance or color?

Sorry. I'm not familiar with American Revolution, Lily.

@GaNinFl,
I think you have both of these (Black Plush and American Revolution), have you had them both enough to compare the two? It might not be a lot of help to Frillylily due to the zone differences though.

Unfortunately, I only have American Revolution. Which, didn't do so well last year.

Stan
Sorry, I thought for sure you had 'Black Plush" also, now I think I had it confused with 'Night Wings'.

This is the second summer that Black Plush has grown in my garden, and I am very happy with it. The flowers are small but their color is consistently a lovely velvety, saturated black-red without blotches. The scapes do not need to be staked.

Does anyone have a bud count for BLACK PLUSH?

Thanks in advance I hope.

Charley

At some point in 2000-2001, I bought a daylily at Lowe's Home Improvement. It had a tag that said Maya Purple (which I've since lost).

I planted it in the ground, where it lived for about a decade before being dug up due to my precipitous change of residence. It spent a year in a bag of sand, and was then potted at some point between 2012 and 2013.

The point of all this is that time hasn't been kind to this plant, which until yesterday was a NoID purchased under an alternate name.
That said, this plant is very vigorous in my Zone 7b garden.

The increase is significant, with the clumps expanding outward in a neat circle. The increase/crowding hasn't seemed to hamper blooming thus far.

After many years of trying to ID this cultivar, I ran across a thumbnail image of Black Plush yesterday. I thought, "That's it!" I read the details (few, given this cultivar's age) and looked up growers' online listings. Other than the fact that my plants' scapes haven't quite reached the registered height of 32", everything matches. Even the fact that this 1955 cultivar won an award in 2003 seems to support that it was mass-marketed in the years leading up to that.

Here are the clumps on March 1 and March 19 of 2020:
And here's one of those clumps now:

As far as bloom goes, it's prolific for a short while. I'm not sure of the bud count per scape, but I'd say it's low. The number of scapes per clump is high, though. I'll add some flower pics soon, but for now I'm out of time!

I would be surprised if Black Plush was ever mass marketed. The breeder could tell you for sure.

At some point in 2000-2001, I bought a daylily at Lowe's Home Improvement. It had a tag that said Maya Purple (which I've since lost).

I planted it in the ground, where it lived for about a decade before being dug up due to my precipitous change of residence. It spent a year in a bag of sand, and was then potted at some point between 2012 and 2013.

The point of all this is that time hasn't been kind to this plant, which until yesterday was a NoID purchased under an alternate name. That said, this plant is very vigorous in my Zone 7b garden.

The increase is significant, with the clumps expanding outward in a neat circle. The increase/crowding hasn't seemed to hamper blooming thus far.

After many years of trying to ID this cultivar, I ran across a thumbnail image of Black Plush yesterday. I thought, "That's it!" I read the details (few, given the cultivar's age) and looked up growers' online listings. Other than the fact that my plants' scapes haven't reached the registered height of 32", everything matches. Even the fact that a 1955 cultivar won an award in 2003 seems to support that it was mass-marketed in the years leading up to that.

Here are the clumps on March 1 and March 19 of 2020:
And here's one of the clumps now:

As far as bloom goes, it's prolific for a short while. I'm not sure of the bud count per scape, but I'd say it's low. The number of scapes per clump is high, though. I'll add some flower pics soon, but for now I'm out of time!