I thought it would be appropriate for us to benchmark those we have that held up really well with the hot weather and lack of natural rain watering, particularily here in the Central Midwest. Here are the commercial ones I have who's heat tolerance was nothing less that purely outstanding. Anyone else who observed outstanding performers, please add to to this thread.

#1. ICE FOLLIES



#2. SEAFARER



#3. TROPICAL ISLE


Surprized? So was I.

#4. PAULA MARIE



#5. TEMPERATURE ILLUSTRATION




These are the ones I considered outstanding because they seemingly were not even bothered with the heat and blistering, bright sun and a blustery hot breeze. Edit added: In general, I noticed that from cultivar to cultivar and from plant to plant, the older, larger plants were more affected than the younger, smaller ones, accross the board.

We topped off the hottest at 107 and in the 100's for days. I actually made notes myself for great performers, and there were some.

Elusive
Gambetta
Lesetho
Black Beauty
Miss Feya
Miss Lily
L. henryi
L. henryi citrinum
Tropical Isle
Scheherezade ( best performer of all, hands down)
Bonbini (actually kept the coloration quite well, surprisingly)
Act II

Lots of the purple-ish, newer OTs faired the poorest of them all. Bud scorch even in part shade.

I'll add that those purplish OTs faired badly here in the Willamette Valley where so far we have had only one hot day (100+). Most days have been in the high seventies to mid eighties! They are totally worthless for garden use in my opinion.

The only exception is 'Purple King' (not "new" either), not a stellar performer, but holds up pretty well. The only one in that shade I have purchased with a prayer for garden worthiness.

LA's that did well - Suncrest and Kentucky
OT's - Scheherazade and Beauty Rose (neither seemed fazed by the weather)
Oriental Mint Fizz stood up surprisingly well
Awesome was awesome.
Yellow Henryi and L speciosum Album (presently doing well).

Great topic! All of my lilies were first year performers, so keep that in mind.

There were the best performers overall:

Lilium regale--managed to bloom for a solid three weeks through the June heat wave.
Scheherazade/Silver Scheherazade--outstanding heat tolerance.
Lilium henryi--outstanding heat tolerance.
Conca d'Or--one of the best among fragrant OTs.

In general, any lilies with thin petal texture such as Asiatics tended to not hold up very long. Ditto for the beautiful LOs 'Triumphator' and 'El Condor' which stayed in glorious full bloom for barely 1.5 weeks each before the show was over due to heat.

For me, I had heat into the 100's F, but hardly any drought, so my results will have a different meaning. So ...

It seems anything with Lilium henryi parentage did quite well: White Henryi, Louise, and the rest of the Aurelian group. The closely related Lilium rosthornii also did well.

This turned out to be a good test for Triumphator. Other years, I have had heat and drought, and the flowers bloomed, but petals were very limp, sagged badly and short lasting. This year being even hotter but with fairly ample rainfall, flowers were very satisfactory.