Background history:

'Ed Brown' is a semi-evergreen tetraploid introduced in 1994 by Salter.

It has earned the following AHS awards:
Stout Silver Medal: 2006
Award of Merit: 2003
Honorable Mention: 2000

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

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.



Also, please consider adding a Plant Performance Report to the database! Thank you!

Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Ed Brown')

459 registered descendants in the data base. Wow! I figure at least 10 times that many siblings probably got tossed and some seedlings are still lurking in someone's garden being used as a parent just called 'seedling'. Likely more coming along, too. It must have some good quality or multiple qualities that get passed along to be used that much. I don't grow it, so no report from here.

I grew Ed Brown for several years in MD and NY. In MD, increase was moderate. In NY, it stayed the same 8 fans for years. I finally moved it on for better plants. My plant always looked like the first image above. I enjoyed growing it, because I never had to move it or divide it.

David

I do grow it but this is just the second year in the garden. It did bloom a few blooms last year, and the plant has returned and looks very healthy at the moment.
This was the plant in the garden last year:


I will go down to the garden tomorrow and get a current photo, and check for scapes. Last year the first scapes came on April 12, but with the warm winter it might be earlier this year.
Edited to add current photo:

Certainly looks like those leaves need to green up, maybe with the weather warming they will look better. I think those recent cold nights (low thirties and high twenties) have made a lot of my plants look like that.
I saw no scapes yet, but it does look like a new name tag is about due!

It is not real hardy here in zone 6b but has increased in to a fair sized clump and always blooms.Some of the best crosses I have ever made has it as a parent.

@needrain -- That is amazing reproduction! It looks like EB helped generate a lot of ruffled/toothy edges. I followed the child plant list until I saw Diana's Pink Gown. I have DPG's seedling Diana's Evening Gown so yeah, Ed Brown is showing up in grand-seedlings! And considering I did buy it to cross it...

Ought to start a "six degrees to Ed Brown" thread- see how many 2nd (or beyond) generations trace back to Ed...

Ed Brown is quite pretty.
I initially purchased Ed and some relatives for rust resistant properties.
When the strong tendency to root rot here in zone 9a was discovered,
and the strong tendency to pass that on to offspring, I had to give up on Ed.

I will watch mine closely then, being it is planted in a very wet bog bed, Thanks for the heads up.

I have had Ed Brown for several years. It looks healthy, the number of blooms are about average but it usually reblooms & the blooms always look good. It hasn't multiplied much at all. I received it as a single fan and after at least 6 or 7 years it was only 3 fans last year. It looks like it might be 4 fans this year (but I have some tradescantia nearby & that fools me early on). I have kept it because of all the lovely seedlings that others have produced. Haven't set a lot of seed pods on it because it has so few fans, but seems to set pods easily. I have gotten some pretty seedlings from it, but not as special as hoped.

I always looked forward to Ed Brown blooming. I had it for a number of years and then decided to send it south as it struggled to increase in my climate. Like mentioned, it is very fertile and I do have a few seedlings from it that I kept as bridge plants to hybridize with.

Hemlady said:I always looked forward to Ed Brown blooming. I had it for a number of years and then decided to send it south as it struggled to increase in my climate. Like mentioned, it is very fertile and I do have a few seedlings from it that I kept as bridge plants to hybridize with.

From the seeds Hemlady sent me last year, I germinated and planted out 5 seedlings of the cross (Critic's Choice x Ed Brown) x Prickled Petals. I am anxious to see how they came through the winter, but they are still under quite a bit of snow.
Update:
All five seedlings survived the 2016-17 winter and thrived during the 2017 growing season. My journal comments are 'seedlings large and strong'.

Ed Brown struggled here in the north, did not increase much and had few blooms. I did give it time, eventually it was removed from the garden for a better performing daylily.

'Ed Brown' was a rotter for me, as well as some of it's progeny such as Amish Lace and White Noise, to name a couple off the top of my head.

@Xenacrockett
@judydu2
Not sure you can summon two people at one time?
For both or either of you, was your Ed Brown planted in poorly draining soil?
Were their anything you attributed the rot to, did the plant just rot under normal growing conditions? How long had you had the plant before the rot killed it?
Thanks for any info!

Seedfork said:@Xenacrockett
@judydu2
Not sure you can summon two people at one time?
For both or either of you, was your Ed Brown planted in poorly draining soil?
Were their anything you attributed the rot to, did the plant just rot under normal growing conditions? How long had you had the plant before the rot killed it?
Thanks for any info!

All my daylilies grow in raised beds. 'Ed Brown' and some of its children rotted under the same conditions as everything I grow. From conversations I had (at the time) with other folks along the gulf coast, this plant was/is just prone to rot.
People can say what they will, but I am convinced that the rot problem is a genetic flaw, one that may not show up in the north, but when exposed to the climatic pressure of high daily heat and humidity nearly year round, plants that are prone to rot will eventually rot because they can not handle soil pathogens in a garden setting that most other daylilies can shrug off.

Oh my, do I ever remember the first time to see 'Ed Brown! ' It was in 1999 and it was in Van Sellers Iron Gate Gardens in a special display bed for his newest plants. It was a round bed near the gift shop they used to have. We could tell it was a new plant because it was only 1 or 2 fans, and only one bloom ( with one scape) was open that day. Van had just gotten it from the Salters the year before. This one was quite revolutionary when it came out, as it had the largest gold edge on it with that ice pink color that anyone had ever seen to that time. We were entranced! I remember several of my club members standing there for quite a long time , looking at it almost reverently, as it was on everyone's most desired list and we'd only heard of it by reputation to that point. This plant was probably the most sought after plant for a year or two back then.

So that day I naturally decided I HAD to have it ( although it was quite difficult to obtain for several years.) Single fans were going for around $150 or more , which was steep for the time. I didn't take copious notes back in those years( was still working) , so I can't recall what I paid for it and when I got it. I became a Garden Judge in 2000 and by the time this appeared on the Stout Medal Ballot in 2006, I'd grown it long enough to know I wouldn't vote for it.

Back in those days, the internet was a lot newer than it is now, and the email robin was still quite active. A lot of discussion went on when it was time to announce the AHS Awards each year. Quite honestly, when this was awarded the SSM, there were quite a few unfavorable comments from garden judges, because ( as some of you are discovering) this cultivar doesn't thrive as well in zones 6 and lower.

Back during these years, Florida was considered the only "Mecca" for daylily lovers ( as opposed to the northern mecca that is now quite active) and many judges, growers or any robin members with opinions spoke out that this cultivar shouldn't have won the Stout because it didn't do well in northern climates after the award was announced. Of course, this talk died down after a while, and more people from more northern areas were inspired to become garden judges so that they could feel votes were more equally distributed between southern and northern judges. Nowadays, just as many ( if not more) cultivars from northern climates will win awards as those from the deep south. It has definitely equalized, if not turned in the other direction!

'Ed Brown' grew here for maybe 9 or 10 years, but it limped along during rough winters and I finally ( after donating a piece to my clubs Stout Medal bed) moved it out about 5 or 6 years ago. I only kept a couple of pictures from the years it grew here. These were taken around 2005. Pretty, but as one becomes more discriminating, one comes to realize that life is short, why not grow plants that survive and thrive and give you joy without having to being nursed along in difficult winters and give you only a few blooms? (well, that's my choice at least.)

Thanks for the comments on 'Ed Brown' (and some descendants) being a rotter; they are very useful to me.

I had some seedlings that were grand-kids of 'Ed Brown', via 'Hip to Be Square' (H2BS hereafter). H2BS is from 'Bill Norris' x 'Ed Brown'. (I used to have 'Bill Norris' (no longer; it is prone to rust), but I don't know if that plant is a rotter or not; it did not have that problem here.) H2BS (grown in a raised bed in part shade) has not had any rot problems here, but some of its seedlings (in sunnier, hotter, and wetter conditions), unfortunately did. I lost half of one seedling last summer, and all of another seedling (these were two small clumps, at most about 6 fans), plus two volunteer NOID seedlings (which I strongly feel were from H2BS).

I bought 'Ed Brown' about a year or so ago and have not had bloom yet; it is grown in a pot in part shade. Since it was parent to H2BS I was going to use it in poly hybridizing, but seeing the rot in some of the H2BS seedlings, and the reports of 'Ed Brown' (and progeny) rot from folks on this thread, I guess not.

Very interesting comments on Ed Brown. I just got it last year so I cannot say too much about it but I'm happy to read these reviews so now I can be on the look-out for some of the issues mentioned.

I got Ed Brown about 10 years ago. It grew just OK for a couple of years---just long enough to get some seeds from it. Then it was reduced to a small clump of grass by an exceptionally cold winter. The next year it was gone. The year after that---it came back! It was just a small, single fan---but it did come back. The next year the fan grew large enough to bloom. After the winter it disappeared for good. It was very prone to rust and spring sickness. It's a shame because the seedlings it produced are beautiful, but also are susceptible to rust. That's why I never replaced it.
Ed Brown
Ed Brown
Ed Brown

'Ed Brown' prone to rust?!

I thought that it was supposed to be resistant to rust!

The database gives it a score of 1.3, and so far it hasn't gotten rust here.