I'm not a AHS member.. but I read this on Facebook?
Sounds logical to me

:
Mike Holmes
Yesterday 9:44pm

Several Days ago,Nikki Schmith let us know that the word "Dormant" is going away be replaced by "Deciduous". Nikki was merely the messenger here sharing a passed motion brought to the AHS Board by the Scientific Committee. If you have any questions or complaints, Scott Elliott is the Chair of the Scientific Committee, contact him.

Here is what was said "James Gossard This is what was on ahs facebook pages, The AHS Scientific Studies Committee and the AHS Board of Directors has voted unanimously to correct the improper usage of the term DORMANT when applied to foliage type in daylilies.

The correct terms for foliage type now reflect proper (and common) botanical usage of the terms Deciduous, Evergreen and Semi-Evergreen (or Semi-deciduous, which can be used interchangeably) for herbaceous perennials.

Botanically speaking, ALL daylilies go dormant. It is how they respond to temperature differences which varies.

Foliage type has no correlation with states of dormancy. For example, pine trees are evergreen, yet go dormant with the advent of colder weather without losing their leaves. Likewise, evergreen daylilies attempt to keep their leaves and will do so until they are burned off by the cold, while semi-evergreen and deciduous daylilies automatically lose part or all of their leaves, respectively, in response to colder weather conditions, possibly even in response to day-length or other factors."

ALL, with this revision in how we will soon register our daylilies as Deciduous, Evergreen and Semi-Evergreen how will this effect you as a hybridizer in how you register daylilies?

I guess those who are registering daylilies won't have any choice in the matter; the only permitted choices will be evergreen, semi-evergreen, or deciduous. I have to wonder what the short descriptor for that is going to be, though... "DEC"? "Dec"?

If * I * were registering something (alas, I have not yet achieved that happy state), I would feel confident in registering it as "deciduous" only if all of the foliage appeared to disappear (for however long) during the winter. (I have had several such seedlings recently start peeking aboveground. Formerly I would have said that they were breaking dormancy... now I'm not sure if that would still be a correct description. )

Otherwise, if the daylily was not clearly evergreen, if even a tiny bit of green persisted aboveground in the winter (easy for me to tell in my climate, not so easy for others in their climates), I would call it semi-evergreen. (Between holidays and what-not, I was late enough to start making winter notes on my seedlings, that there are some which I am uncertain if they are semi-evergreen or deciduous. My guess is that most or all of them had a bit of green aboveground throughout December and most of January.)

I have to say that while this change to "deciduous" may be botanically correct, I had a hard enough time moving my head over from "polytepaled" to "polymerous" (a change iirc also made to reflect common botanical usage). I think it's going to be even harder for me to start thinking in terms of "deciduous" daylilies instead of "dormant" ones, although at least now I won't have to try to explain why a few of my non-dormant daylilies seemingly go dormant during the heat of the summer!

(I have had several such seedlings recently start peeking aboveground. Formerly I would have said that they were breaking dormancy... now I'm not sure if that would still be a correct description.

It would still be correct. Think about a deciduous tree. When the buds burst in spring you would say it is breaking dormancy. That doesn't make it not deciduous, it was both deciduous and dormant during the winter. Dormancy relates to growth or rather lack thereof, deciduous refers to the non-persistence of the foliage, so they are two different things.

Thank you for that clarification, Sue.

a lot of people reacted to the news on Facebook.

on Febr 9th James Gossard said:
" My problem is , since I hybridize in the south and introduce in the north, all the kinnebrew daylilies lose their leaves to a point in the North. So thus deciduous. I see no point confusing people. It is useless information. So now a evergreen and dormant becomes the same. I will just register all as deciduous. My website will use correct terms, dormant, semi evergreen and Evergreen like all past hybridizers have done."


For a (still) newbie like me that is very confusing...
Not that it matters a lot here, our Winters are usually mild.
But still... confusing!

For those who want to read the whole thread: it was posted in the group 'Daylily Hybridizers Nook'.
Lot of interesting info there!

Mayo

Unfortunately that is mixing up two different things. I don't quite follow why it is a problem to categorize as deciduous what you would previously have called dormant, it's just a change of name to be more accurate.

Why mess with a good thing, and confuse the history of daylilies? I'm feeling sort of Trumpish on this. Drain the swamp, and get rid of this committee.

Many daylilies are improperly registered now regarding dormancy. Three toothy cultivars that I bought from northern hybridizers last year were registered as dormant. But they did not lose any leaves this winter. (All of my true dormants did lose all their fans in December.)

The way to distinguish a semi-evergreen from a dormant is to dig down once they've lost their leaves. A semi-evergreen will have a resting bud. A true dormant will not have one.

Two questions. Why get rid of the committee, and why would a "true dormant" not have a resting bud when the AHS registration guidelines say that they do?

And just what the heck does a "resting bud" look like, anyway?

Polymerous said:And just what the heck does a "resting bud" look like, anyway?

Scroll down this page to the experiment photographs, the resting buds are the second picture. Often they are shorter than this but it was the first place I thought of that had a picture of them online. I do have more pictures in my laptop upstairs and I'll try and post one later:

http://web.ncf.ca/ah748/latent...

sooby said:

Scroll down this page to the experiment photographs, the resting buds are the second picture. Often they are shorter than this but it was the first place I thought of that had a picture of them online. I do have more pictures in my laptop upstairs and I'll try and post one later:

http://web.ncf.ca/ah748/latent...

What is the date of this article? 2014? Interesting that the daylilies used in the experiment were referred to as deciduous instead of dormant.

The date would be early 2000's. The term deciduous was used because it was from a scientific article and that's the nearest correct term. If you go back to the 1800's early 1900's the precursor of the AHS check lists only used the terms deciduous and evergreen. The inappropriate switch to dormant came in some time later.

If you check out this botanical key to Hemerocallis species in the Flora of China on the Harvard website, for example, they also only use deciduous and evergreen:

http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/c...

Edited to add this from the abstract of the scientific journal the full experiment was described in: "The fungus seems to alternate regularly between daylilies and patrinias in Japan because most daylily species are deciduous...."
From: http://link.springer.com/artic...

One of the best photo essays I have seen was authored by Di DeCaire and was later published on Brian Reeder's blog. It clearly shows photos of what evergreen daylilies look like in the north. They can also be said to have lost their leaves.
http://daylilybreeder.blogspot...
The article is in the archives dated Jan 2015
I will do what I have to do when I register plants, but will continue to use the terms "dormant" and "hard dormant" on my web page. A "hard dormant" is one in which the resting bud remains below ground. Those are my favorite types as the resting bud is safe from all the late freezes that come in March.

The evergreen daylilies in the north are also dormant in winter. So are semi-evergreens. All daylilies are dormant where it is cold enough if we're using dormant in the correct sense of not growing. Nothing changes other than switching to using the more correct term deciduous instead of dormant for registration of those that you would previously have registered as dormant.

There are also photos of a resting bud and sprouted buds in the thread
The thread "dormant, evergreen and semi-evergreen" in Daylilies forum
along with a discussion of daylily growth & dormancy.

Isn't that opening the door for hybridizers of evergreen daylilies to register their plants as deciduous?

How is that different from their registering them as dormant?

That a plant might be dormant, meaning not growing, cannot be identified by looking at it only once.

Even if all the leaves die and there is nothing visible above the soil surface and there is a closed bud below the soil surface does not necessarily mean that the bud is dormant. When we want to know whether our children are growing we may measure them by marking their heights on walls or doorways, etc. at least twice. In the same way, to know whether a daylily bud is actually dormant we need to look at it at least twice, separated by sufficient time for any growth to be visible to us. How quickly a plant grows depends on the temperature the plant (in this case the bud) experiences. For example, if it takes three days for a bud to show visible growth at 25C/77F, it may take 12 days for the same amount of growth to be visible at 10C/50F (when there is next to no easily visible growth below 5C/41F).

I believe northern hybridizers recognize there are differences on a cellular level to the crowns of dormants vs the crowns of evergreens that program them for different growth rates and survivability thru winter with dormants needing a winter rest. Evergreens are deciduous involuntarily so to speak. There was a presentation years ago at a midwinter meeting from a member of the scientific community explaining the cell walls of evergreen crowns are thinner and more susceptible to penetration by ice shards...thus explaining their tendency to not only lose their leaves but also rot during the winter in the north. So to me dormancy is more than just losing leaves....it is an essential process. The term deciduous just adds confusion to a well understood term. It's interesting that dissenting posts are removed from the AHS Facebook pages....why not let people say what they think?

FWIW, probably not much...as a non daylily hybridizer. The term deciduous makes more sense based on what I've leaned concerning plant material. Purchasing plants, I just want to know if it will grow and prosper in my zone. (4b)! I've found the terms dormant, evergreen and semi evergreen not useful in my descision to purchase a daylily. Will it grow, flower and come back every year.Not throwing stones.