Background history:

'Royal Eventide' is a evergreen diploid introduced in 1985 by Kirchhoff-D..

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

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 'Royal Eventide')

I have had this plant since 2015, it is a single form but always seems to have extra material that often makes it look more like a double. I can't recall a bloom that looked like a pure single bloom. This variety has been moved in my garden a couple of times. Not because of poor performance but just the opposite, this plant has formed the largest clump found in my entire garden. I plan to use this plant for some of my crosses this year because it has been such an outstanding performer, tons of blooms and scapes. The clump is so large I really need to divide it this year, but I may wait till fall. It will be interesting to see how many fans come from this clump.


Look at the foliage on this plant, this was July when a lot of the plants are really looking a bit ratty, but the foliage here is still green and healthy looking, that is what I want my crosses to inherit. I am not a big fan of the bloom, but I think it could result in some interesting results.

Royal Eventide is not a peak performer in my northern garden. It is often splotchy and the color isn't clear. The photo I am posting is a nice bloom. This may be one that performs best in the south. I did move it MN when I moved from GA, 12 years ago. If memory serves me right, it looked much better there. If not, I probably wouldn't have brought it with me!

I was just looking at this plant today, and it looks like pollen is very hard to find on it, but I will try using it as a pod parent because it has many nice traits even If I don't like the bloom. The stamen seem to mostly merge into petaloids.
Found this on line: It seems to be a great description for 'Royal Eventide':
http://www.daylilymeadows.com/...
"Semi-double": Having only petaloids of some or, occasionally, all stamens. Usually the pistil is normal. Nearly all flowers of this class are potentially fertile in respect to some stamens and the pistil."
If you look close at the first three photos of mine posted in this thread you will see little evidence of the stamen.

Royal Eventide is a very interesting plant. I've just been reading through @Seedfork Larry's review and comments about it. I see that the database entry has been updated to describe the plant as a double, which I am sure it is, although it is a unique-looking one.

First of all I'll say that I have not tried any crosses with Royal Eventide, so I can't comment on its fertility or difficulty of setting pods, etc. If I do try to use it, I'll update.

I received a nice 8-to-10-fan clump of Royal Eventide from Arrasmith Farm in the fall of 2021, so I've had the plant for two bloom seasons. Mine has not yet taken off like Larry's. That may be because I moved it after its first season. It was very crowded in its bed, and I just moved it forward a few inches. A move is a move, though, so I'm not sure the plant has had a chance to fully settle in, and it hasn't reached its registered height yet. Still, I've been very pleased with the plant.

I wanted Royal Eventide because of its rust resistance and its extreme earliness. Its reputation for both qualities is fully deserved. It has never shown rust in my garden, and both seasons it has been the second of all my cultivars to bloom, right after Bitsy, who retains the top spot.

The blooms are interesting rather than beautiful. The color is mauve-purple with white stripes on the petals. Sometimes it looks like a bitone. It's not consistently double--even when it is, the amount of extra tissue varies. Both seasons its first couple of blooms have been singles. At what I would call its most characteristic, it almost has a scrambled-eggs effect:



Here's another shot from its first season showing a single and a double bloom:

You can see the healthy dark-green foliage described by Larry above. (The whitish spots are Liquid Fence.)

This season Royal Eventide showed similar performance but surprised me with a very late rebloom in October. The plant blooms so early that I tend to forget about it later. All the reblooms were singles:

Royal Eventide overall has been a good performer, and I will keep it.