Twice each month this year we are dedicating a week to a specific plant, and in early April we'll be celebrating Daylilies Week. A new feature is we've been putting together a list of the top 25 cultivars of each plant week. It's fun to see what are the most popular tomatoes, peppers, water plants, and so forth.

Well, how do we know which plants are the most popular? We look to our database. I have a program I have written that goes through all the cultivars of the database and counts how many individuals have posted photos and comments to each entry. The entries that have the most photos and comments are the most popular ones! (If one person posts 10 photos, that still only counts as 1.)

Currently Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Siloam Double Classic') is the most popular daylily in the database, followed by Daylily (Hemerocallis 'South Seas') .

This can change, though! So I encourage you to go to the daylilies database at The Daylilies Database and then find your favorite daylilies and post a quick comment about them, talking them up and telling everyone how great it is and why they should grow it. If you have a photo of it, then add that photo. Doing this will help your favorite cultivars climb up into a higher ranking on the list.

Daylilies Week starts on April 5th so you have a couple weeks to do it. I hope everyone has fun and I'm personally looking forward to seeing the final list of the top 25 most popular cultivars.

Can't wait to see the final list of ATP's top 25 daylily cultivars! It is so awesome to have people's comments and photos in the database, too, since each person captures a slightly different aspect. The comments have been a tremendous help in choosing cultivars - they can go so far beyond the usual data (rate of increase, close-ups of features like metallic edges, etc) and truly the most helpful of all can be the less formal ones that show what to expect of a First Flower Opened, shots of spent scapes showing height and number of blooms, etc.

Oh dear, it will be dormant city. Nothing can save us.

Really? Why not call.them the "most widely distributed" daylilies? I could post a dozen images of each daylily I've submitted, but lack the time and don't see the purpose of doing that. It is difficult for me to compute that a cultivar having the most images posted would be designated the most "popular" based on that one bit of subjective data.

Comments count as well as images and take less time, if time is a factor.

Well, popular is really an interesting word, having in its roots "people" and "populace". It is literally true that the cultivars to which the most people have posted are literally the most popular in the database.

Keep in mind: it's not counting photos and comments. It is counting how many individual people have posted a photo and/or comment to each cultivar. Those cultivars that have the most individuals are seen as the most "popular" insofar as the database itself is concerned.

As for the most widely distributed, I don't think we have any way of knowing that. All we can really know is how many people post about them to the site. I would be interested to know that, though. Maybe one day I can correlate the postings with the users' locations and try to find which ones are grown and discussed by the most widely dispersed population.

I just got my AHS daylily magazine. On the front are the most popular daylilies as voted on by the members. It may be a place to start ????

We're going to make the Top 25 list based on our database. When I did it with tomatoes, I got some feedback that people wished they had been given some notice ahead of time so they could have made some extra comments in order to sway the vote.

So, I started this thread just to give advanced notice to everyone as to how the list will be compiled in case anyone here might to know. I'm not specifically asking anyone to do anything, just letting you all know what's coming and giving you the chance to swing the numbers if you wanted to.

Seeing the most "Popular" daylilies I think is a fun thing. I think's Dave's method of picking the most popular is sound, there is no one way and maybe there might be better ways, but I plan just to enjoy seeing the ones other people think are worth the effort to post.

Hey @Dave -- Considering that AHS actually has a "popularity poll," it would be interesting to see how many of the ATP database "populars" match up to the AHS popularity poll results.

Just a thought, and as with all my thoughts, you can feel free to disregard it.

@Floota -- maybe you could do a quick paragraph or two on the AHS popularity poll as an article for Daylily week? That would be an interesting complement to the ATP database popularity article. (again, just a thought, and free to be ignored/discarded).

I'm also curious as to how the ATP list matches up with the AHS' poll.

And yes, if anyone including floota would like to submit a brief article promoting the AHS poll I'd be very happy to include it in the articles for daylilies week.

How does the AHS decide which is the most popular? And I am guessing they compile a new list each year?

Frilly - this article I wrote might answer some questions about the AHS Pop Poll.
http://garden.org/ideas/view/d...

Thanks for the heads up on this, Dave!

I will try to find some time to add some comments to my favorites and see if I can "swing the numbers", (as Dave put it)!

ah, thank you! Very informative article. I found out I am region 11. Also looks like Primal Scream is a hands down about everywhere....

Yes, the way the AHS Pop poll is done is different than what Dave is asking of us here. Here we are talking about what is most popular in the database.

Can't wait to see the list. Sounds like a fun one

Ah, Primal Scream, king of the dormants.

Glen - Maybe some of us in warmer climates can sway some of the "votes" for popular daylilies! There are a number of "southern" growers here, too!

Just saying .....

That would be interesting to compare the AHS popularity votes to the database votes here on ATP. I hope someone does a brief article about that! Would love to read it!