I have noticed that my daylily, Purifying My Heart sends up 2 scapes per fan this year. Is this an environmental condition or genetic? Is there any other daylilies out there that can produce more than 2 scapes per fan? Wow, this is such a wonderful trait. I have always thought that each fan can only produce one blooming scape at a time.

It isn't uncommon when the plant is happy, well fed and watered. I have several that were double fans when I received them in April that have divided into 5 or more fans and put out 2 or more scapes. They were very healthy when I received them and I have been generous to them with nutrition and water.

Yes, VAMPIRE LIPSTICK and HALLOWEEN GREEN come to mind a special plants that do that here. I irrigate.

@admmad
We have had discussions about this before and I am still trying to figure out how to look at a plant and tell if it is two scapes from one fan or something that an untrained eye can't see. I can never get the opportunity to count the leaves on my plants because I am constantly pulling them due to rust, leaf streak and dieback. But your photo is about the clearest I have seen showing the leaves of the plant and the scapes, so I would love for admmad to look at it and give an opinion, and try to educate me a little better.

Thank you, Julie (floota) for the names of daylilies exhibiting multiple scapes trait. I will look into them.

Here are some more pics if they will help. I have 6 fans of this daylily in total. 2 fans have 2 blooming scapes at the same time.

Pic of clump


Front fan with 2 scapes


Fan behind the front fan with 2 scapes.

This is 'Jim Reilly Memorial' which I received and potted in May. Both fans produced 2 scapes each. In this case one scape emerged and began blooming first. Before it was finished the second scape emerged from the opposite side of the fan.

I received a gift of 'Diamond Shores' from Floyd Cove in April. It was a large double fan. Each fan produced a scape from the center of the crown just 2 leaves off center and 3 leaves off the scape that had been cut for shipping. Once this scape began to bloom the fan began to twist and divide into 3 fans each with a scape emerging. I currently have 7 fans and 6 scapes on that original double that had previously scraped before I received it. It is not blooming out or depleting itself. It is vigorously growing, blooming, reblooming and carrying pods although I have set modestly upon it.

Wow, Virginia! THat is amazing that you get double scapes from a potted plant. I will look into both of your recommendations but Diamond Shores is absolutely gorgeous.

@seedfork

By definition a fan always produces only one scape.
A daylily crown is a compressed shoot or a compressed stem.
Many plants have a simple growth pattern. They produce a stem with leaves on alternate sides. As the plant grows the stem increases in height and more leaves are produced.
When plants have this simple growth pattern there is often a main bud at the very top of the stem. To get the plant to be bushy, the gardener may "pinch out" or cut-off the tip of the stem including the bud. When that is done, buds on the stem between a leaf and the stem may start to grow branches and the plant becomes bushy. Those buds are called axillary buds because they are formed in the angle made by the leaf and the stem.
A daylily has the same simple growth pattern but its stem (or shoot) more or less does not visibly grow (taller). That stem/shoot is called the daylily crown. The part that produces the new daylily growth, the equivalent to the main bud of many plants is called the growing point or the shoot apical meristem (SAM for short).
The job of the SAM is to produce new leaves and a tiny section of new stem or shoot (crown tissue). The SAM produces what we call the fan. It does that while the fan is juvenile or not mature (it cannot flower yet). The immature fan is described as vegetative. The SAM produces its new leaves and crown repeatedly. When the fan (or the crown or the SAM - we do not know which is the important factor) becomes large enough the SAM stops doing its vegetative job of producing new leaves and pieces of crown and becomes reproductive. The SAM does not simply produce the scape - it becomes the scape. It gets completely used up by the time the last bud is finished blooming. The fan no longer has a SAM. It cannot produce any more new leaves or crown tissue.
The crown (stem or shoot) does exactly what the stems of other plants do when they no longer have a bud (for example when it is pinched out). It produces one or more new SAMs in the angles between a leaf and the crown.
The new SAM produces a new fan of new leaves.
So by definition a scape is the last thing a SAM does. A new SAM then needs to be created.

The catch.
Some daylily cultivars, in some growing conditions produce a new SAM and it starts to produce new leaves before the scape is large enough for the gardener to notice. These are called continuous growers and it is often next to impossible to distinguish the a new SAM and a new fan have been created.

Other daylily cultivars in other growing conditions do not produce a new SAM quickly. The scape may become visible to the gardener before any new leaves are produced by the new SAM and those leaves are noticeably different from the leave sof the previous fan. They are smaller. These are called discontinuous growers.

I was also reading your post about the width of the fan being an indicator of the ability of a fan to bloom (make a scape). So I get confused when trying to put these two things together. If a fan needs to be mature and develop to a certain width to bloom (form a scape), how can fans so tiny be producing a scape? So I am thinking that a fan's width is normally a good indicator of the fans ability to produce a fan, but the width of the fan is not a definite indicator of the fans ability to produce a scape.
If a plant is able to produce scapes with such small immature fans would it tend to produce scapes at a more rapid pace I would think and thus be a desirable trait? Or does it tend to stress the plant and actually cause it in the long run to be a less desireable trait?

I've been trying to look at my daylilies that produce multiple fans like this. After they finish blooming, I can see that many are not 2 fans. Rock Solid does not seem to do that. I'm not positive I have the number of fans exact from last year, but I believe I had a total of 6 fans, 1 was too immature to bloom. Of the 5 fans, 3 produced 3 scapes each, 2 fans had 2 each. The scapes were developed within days of each other so all were in bloom at the same time at one point. This year I have 7 fans in the clump, 2 produced 3 fans each & 1 had 2 fans. The other 4 only produced 1 fan each. When it finished blooming, I am seeing some small fans, so should be a large clump next year, I wonder if it is divided it will continue like that. I may just divide it up & plant all over my garden. I should add that I do not water or fertilize my plants, or rarely. We have had plenty of rain the last couple of years though.

I am hopelessly lost in putting this all together, terms like instant rebloom seem to confuse me even more now.

@seedfork

A new daylily starts from a seed. When it does so the crown is tiny and the SAM is small. The seedling is juvenile or immature. The seedling needs to grow, in some growing conditions for about a year, in others for several years before it becomes large enough to flower.
Once the crown, the fan, the SAM are large enough to flower and that first SAM becomes the first scape then the axillary bud that sprouts and becomes the replacement fan does not necessarily start its growth at the same small size as the original fan did as a seedling.
In other words the daylily starts as a seed and is a juvenile and immature but once it flowers the plant is adult and mature and the replacement fans/SAMs never need to pass through juvenile stages again.

In the post showing the size of the fans versus flowering the different fans are more or less different crowns (although some may not have been completely separated. The figure does not show how the size of a fan is related to flowering in one crown (rebloom).

A daylily plant starts from a seed and produces a crown. The crown grows in size with time over the years and sooner or later the crown that is producing only one fan of leaves at a time develops a second fan. The crown that had only one fan then has two fans developing at the same time. When that happens instead of one fan having all the resources of the crown to itself the resources are shared between two fans. They are not likely to be shared equally. The new fan/SAM is not a replacement fan, it is brand new and it is likely to be quite small.

Rebloom in daylilies is similar to rebloom in petunias and tomato plants, both of which are formally perennial plants although grown as annuals. When we look at the repeated flowering cycles of the same crown/SAM, once it is large enough to have started flowering it does not necessarily produce the same number of leaves between scapes. Presumably that depends on the size of all the leaves, their number and other growing conditions as well as the size of the replacement SAM and how quickly it grows. In tomatoes a large number of leaves are produced before the first flowers appear but then approximately seven leaves are produced before each set of new flowers.

I have never looked at the growth of the replacement fans and the number of leaves needed to produce a rebloom scape in daylilies as I am in zone 4 and I do not have much rebloom.

@seedfork

Since flowering destroys the growing point (it becomes the scape) and the growing point produces the leaves that are the fan then rebloom scapes are produced by new replacement growing points and new fans.
However, one can look at the situation in a different way. While there is only one active SAM and only one apparent fan of leaves then all the rebloom scapes can be considered to have been produced by the apparent single fan of leaves. Therefore they are rebloom scapes. However, if the crown develops a second active SAM within the same growing season, so it has two fans of leaves growing simultaneously and if both flower then it is not rebloom.

I did a google search for apical meristem, and I came up with this blank page, that is how my brain feels at the moment.


https://sites.google.com/site/...

@seedfork

Oh dear, and that is my page (sorry long left blank).

@seedfork

The question of whether the same fan can produce multiple scapes or not is determined by the growth and flowering pattern of the plant.
The growing point (shoot apical meristem) produces all the of the growth above the soil. It produces all the leaves, the axillary buds, the crown (compressed stem or shoot), the scape, the scape branches, the flowers, etc. It has two ways of doing this.
1) the shoot apical meristem (growing point) produces the leaves, small pieces of crown and axillary buds repeatedly until one day the growing point becomes the scape and one of the axillary buds becomes the new growing point of the replacement fan.
OR
2 the shoot apical meristem (growing point) produces the leaves, small pieces of crown and axillary buds repeatedly until one day it produces a scape instead of an axillary bud and the original shoot apical meristem (growing point) continues to produce the leaves, small pieces of crown and axillary buds repeatedly.

Daylilies follow the first growth and flowering pattern.

The same fan/growing point could produce multiple scapes only if daylilies followed the second growth and flowering pattern.

In daylilies each growing point is associated with one scape since the growing point is consumed to produce that scape. If the crown/plant is growing slowly then the replacement fan (growing point) may not bloom until the next growing season. If the crown/plant is growing quickly then the replacement fan (growing point) may bloom in the same growing season as the previous growing point. If it is growing very well/quickly and the growing season is long enough the cycle may repeat again or multiple times. How quickly the growth and development is happening determines whether there is any overlap in the flowering of consecutive scapes or how much overlap there is.

OK, so I have no explanation for this but did go out this morning and take a few pictures of VAMPIRE LIPSTICK. The plant has been slow to increase here. I got it as a club plant, grew it for 2 years ( it had only grown from 1 to 3 fans. That was in the fall of 2015. I had to dig up 2 fans and started over with 1 fan. BUT, each year, each fan has produced 2 scapes and they grow one just shortly after the other. Here are the pictures. In a couple of them, I attempted to use the "paint tool" which I'm really bad at to illustrate where the scapes are. The fan on the left looks more ready to divide, but when you look at it in the garden, it still only looks like 2 fans - with 2 scapes per fan. Comments?
The first picture I colored the scapes:

Here are the 2 fans with the scapes:

Here's the picture of the entire clump. My garden looks rough at this time of year. Sorry! You may have to blow up the picture to see any detail.

@floota,

Julie, if you will bear with me, I have a favour to ask. If it is possible, could you please look at the two fans of leaves. As pictured in the third photograph of the clump it looks like there is a scape, a leaf, a scape, a fan of leaves, a scape, a leaf, a scape, another fan of leaves.
1) is there just one leaf in between both of the two pairs of scapes?
2) in the fans of leaves, the leaves pictured in the photo appear to be quite long. Their length suggests that they are mature leaves that have stopped elongating some time ago. In the centre of each fan, are there any leaves that are much shorter than the mature length leaves?

I waited until there was time to get more pictures. To answer your first question, YES, on each fan the two scapes are near the side of each fan, and in order: scape, leaf, scape.

I didn't think to get this type of picture earlier because it is not the kind of picture I usually take. Hopefully these two "looking down" into the plant can help illustrate the two fans. The fan on the left it is easier to see the two scapes.



I meant to add, the foliage is quite tall and doesn't arch very much. But, yes, I can see new growth on the inside, although I mentioned in yesterday's post that this has been very slow to increase. My ( non scientific) thought is that producing two scapes and blooms is hard on the plant. W/i the next month, with the growth cycle time approaching, I won't be surprised if a new fan forms. My guess is that this plant is one that doesn't like being dug until it is well established.

@floota

Thank you for the photos. Can you please confirm what appears to be the case with the fan I have marked with a white arrow in the photo below.



I think that is the centre of the fan of leaves, if not then my next request is about the actual centre of the fan. Just to make certain we are on the same page - the centre of the fan is the location where one leaf has its midvein fold (the V) on the left and the leaf directly beside it has its midvein fold on the right.

Are those two leaves more or less the same size as the other leaves in that fan or are they significantly shorter? Are there any leaves in the centre of the fan that are 6 inches or less long, for example?