Hey all, I was just looking over a hybridizer's 2015 introductions and noticed that the average bud count per intro was 15-20. The most expensive cultivar in the collection had 45 buds. Since I am new to this hybridizing thang, I was wondering what kind of bud count do you look for a cultivar to have? Does it even matter?

Thanks for all your help in advance :)

Muata

I select plants that over 20 bud counts and hope for the best. Bud count will vary depending on your climate, watering routines, fertilizer routines, etc. Some counts are inflated and we just have to wait to see what the cultivar will do for us. Even if the daylily you are looking at is hybridized in the same county or the same area as yours, there are no promises that they will perform for you as they do for the hybridizer. That's why comments in the data base are good, they may give you an idea of what to expect.

Yes, bud counts do matter!

Bud count is one of the last things I look for. Its gotta hold its color, be an early morning opener , have good plant habit, and most important, I look for true colors that are not mungy. I find bud count varies pretty widely. As said above, alot of water and fertilizer are a big key. Id rather have three clear blooms than 15 mungy ones.

High bud counts are great! But rare for me.
I have hundreds of registered daylilies and about 20 daylilies have over twenty buds!
Although most of my seedlings have great bud counts.
I have found that all my Mini daylilies have under 10 buds.
I am going to try some of the species daylilies to try and get high bud counts.

Love that "killing plants since 1992". If I had a dollar for every plant I did in during my lifetime, I would surpass Donald Trump in worth, lol.

Thanks for the replies! I love ATP forums because you learn so much. Someone sent me a fan of ¨Redbull¨ which has a crazy listed bud count. I think it's a pretty bloom, so I'm more interested in that than having some super-duper scape with tens of blooms. Has anyone grown her before?

kidfishing said:High bud counts are great! But rare for me.
I have hundreds of registered daylilies and about 20 daylilies have over twenty buds!
Although most of my seedlings have great bud counts.
I have found that all my Mini daylilies have under 10 buds.
I am going to try some of the species daylilies to try and get high bud counts.

Thanks for posting this, as it keeps things in perspective for me now ...

Cookies4kids said:Love that "killing plants since 1992". If I had a dollar for every plant I did in during my lifetime, I would surpass Donald Trump in worth, lol.

Thanks, and I hear you. When people tell me, ¨You have a green thumb!¨... I tell them it's because I had the ¨black hand of death¨ for so long that my luck was bound to change ;)

I think that my Banana Peel and Matt have more buds than anything else in the gardens. They just bloom their silly little hearts out. I worked outside yesterday afternoon, and it was so glorious to be out there again. There are still a few spots of ice under the leaves, but it is definetly spring. I wasn't going to have a plant sale this spring, but I think I caught the bug again. It pays for all my milorganite and pellets, plus I get to meet some interesting people.

Most daylilies that I have purchased with high bud counts usually do not get those high counts in my garden. I think I would rather the plant be a consistent rebloomer because we don't get much rebloom in my zone. I fertilize every spring but our city water does nothing for the plants. Unless we get rain my daylilies do not live up to their potential in my zone.

You are so right Cindy. We have our own well, but you can water until the cows come home and it's a good old rain that does the trick. My flowers are the very best when we get really cool nights in the spring and lots of rain through June. I would like to know what the Amish do to their plants, but asking gets me nowhere. The plants I buy from them grow like weeds. I have never seen anything like it, and it's not my imagination!!! I would guess they go strictly with the natural animal manures on the farms down there, but whatever it is, it works. Can't wait to go this spring.

Karen, I would bet the Amish use a lot of cow manure.

That's what I am thinking. I can buy a Black Eyed Susan vine here and it limps along. When I buy them down there, they take over the whole place, lol. The geraniums are so lush you just can't believe it, and of course the prices are fantastic. So far, they don't have much for daylilies but I get everything else there. I also collect asiatic lilies and they always have the newest varieties.

I would have to go over a l00 miles to get to any Amish store around here.

Well it takes me over 3 hours to get there, but we stay or a few days.

Be careful what you read. Some hybridizers register a plant with the highest bud count they have got. Instead of averaging the bud count over the scapes and over the years.

With my seedlings I usually aim for a bud count of 15 buds , but I have selected seedlings with less buds because those plant put up more scapes and a lower bud count would not be noticed.

If your selecting for high bud counts you should also be selecting for wide spaced branching and bud placement. Some of the higher bud count plants bloom themselves out very quickly.

You are absolutely right Joe. I bought Maxfield Parrish several years ago because of its higher bud count but when you get a scape with 6 or 7 buds opening at the same time, the duration of bloom is shortened because it blooms out faster.

As they get established, the primary record I'm trying to keep is the length of bloom time. The first bloom to the last on a cultivar, by date. To me, that seems a better thing to track than counting buds. Having that will give me a good bit of information about a plant's performance.

needrain,
That is what I am interested in also, a long bloom period. But, I want more than just one or two blooms at a time during that period. I want daylilies with lots of blooms over a long period of time, rust resistant, forms clumps in a short period, foliage always looks great...etc., well somehow I always seem to want more out of a plant than they can provide.

I always consider bud counts as listed in the registration data as only anecdotal information, as they only reflect how a plant performed in the breeder's garden. Some of those gardens that sell commercially water daily and use more fertilizer than the average gardener, so the plants are pumped up beyond normal gardens. Also, I've found a comment made by Melanie Mason years ago to be very helpful. If the plant was bred several zones south of my zone, I deduct five buds for every zone north of that where I live. If a plant was bred in zone 9 and registered with 35 buds there, I might realistically expect it to have only 20-25 buds here on the edge of zone 6-7.
Most of the plant breeders I know try for at least 15 buds as a minimum for selecting to be registered. If the bloom is an 11" bloom, a bud count of 15 would be far more acceptable than bud count of 15 would be for a 3" bloom. Abundant water in the weeks prior to bloom time will help with bud count and rebloom in the climate where I live. In those years when my garden has been on Regional tour , if we hit a dry spell in the weeks leading up to bloom season, I'd always pour the water on if I expected the bloom to be abundant.
As a garden judges instructor, I always like to refer to "bud placement" rather than bud count, and will ask students to look for scapes that have both good and bad bud placement when we are doing part 2 of the GJ workshop in the garden. If buds are not placed so they can open well, a high bud count is virtually useless ( at least to me.) One plant from a northern breeder some years ago was advertised as having a 30+ bud count so everyone wanted it. Yes it was a beautiful bloom and yes, it had a high bud count, but when the buds opened, at least half of them - let's say of 6 blooms on a scape, only 3 of them could fully open because the buds hit each other. I eventually got rid of that plant it my garden although it won an AM, because this trait bothered me so much! Be sure to note bud placement when you are viewing your plants, if you have 4-5 way branching, that of course helps with the bud placement.