I was just wondering. I have a list of those that I love and will continue to grow. Please share yours. I might find a new one to add that I would not have thought of.

Here goes for me.

Black Plush
Barbara Mitchell
Red Volunteer
Isolde
Wilson Spider
Navajo Princess
Yazoo Elzie Hintson
Paper Butterfly
Bonaza
Big Kiss
Pat Garrity
Web of Intrigue
Echoes of Mercy
Scatterbrain

I enjoy giving plants away to family, my community park and other young people just starting out. These are hardy and good plants. What do you keep?

How old is old? I have many that have grown well over the years including:
Chartreuse Magic (I think)
Hyperion
Ice Carnival
Franz Hals
Autumn Red
Dominic
Chicago Arnie's Choice (A real grower!)
Sombrero Way
Jungle beauty
LOTS MORE!!!

Tetrina's Daughter
Kindly Light
Mateus
Linda
Velvet Shadows
Brown Witch
Grey Witch
Red Witch
Planet Max

Oh, I guess before anything over 15 yrs old. I know I always love to see the newest things out but it is hard to beat a tried and true performer. List more if you want.

All my Reckamp daylilies!
Little Rainbow
Techny Spider
Techny Peach Lace
Apricot Serenade
Garden Symphony

Plus
Sir Modred
Ruby Spider
Twist And Shout
Primal Scream
Victorian Lace
Hold Your Horses
Wild Horses
Indian Giver
Wyoming Wildfire
Grand Old Flag


These are my must haves!
So actually about half of what I have!

Maybe a good test of an oldie is if it is readily available for under $5?

If you are a member of AHS, my article about "tried and true" daylilies that perform well here in my zone 6/7 garden appears in the Summer Daylily Journal!

bluegrassmom said:Oh, I guess before anything over 15 yrs old. I know I always love to see the newest things out but it is hard to beat a tried and true performer. List more if you want.

I checked and I'm growing 21 cultivars registered before 2000 and they aren't going anywhere. The newer ones that I'm choosing don't seem to necessarily be superior to them in terms of productive bloom and good plant habits though mostly I like them as well. Two of the three plants that were the best performers this year are 15 years old and when you get to the next level there are a lot more. Some of both the older and newer didn't fare as well. Maybe next year. The oldest one I have is Coral Crab and it was very, very good this year. It has simple form in a great color and blooms freely well above the foliage - all things I like.

This is my main interest at the moment...old, cheap, great performing daylilies. I love old, and cheap, but only if they are also great performers, and I don't think many daylilies would have a 15 year plus history in thousands of gardens across the country if they did not perform well. Being fairly new to daylilies I was fortunate enough to land here at ATP and realized I needed to do a lot of research before making most of my daylily purchases, so most of my plants (two years or less) have been purchased with rust resistance, and performance in mind, based on mostly the $5.00 range of daylilies.
But I have learned here also that probably three years is a minimum to get to know the performance of a daylily in my garden. Most all of my plants are not that old, and none of the ones I actually did research on and purchased as a result of that research are over two years old. So I can't really add anything to the lists based on experience yet. But I will scrutinize this thread, in the search of future plants and want to thank anyone who posts and thank bluegrassmom for starting this thread!
I would like to encourage any comments you might have on any cultivar listed, the comments seem to really sway me in making decisions about these plants.

I see a lot of these plants being listed do not show to have rebloom in the database!
Do many of these older plants that don't show rebloom actually have rebloom, but it just was not listed back then, or is rebloom not that important to many of you, I know many areas do not experience rebloom from most plants.
Rebloom is certainly on my list of requirements for a plant to make my list.

Larry, just a guess but did you check where those plants were hybridized? They're less likely to rebloom in the colder climates with short summers and thus northern-breds may not be listed as rebloomers whereas they might actually do so when grown further south.

bluegrassmom,
Might want to check your tags, I think it should be 'Yazoo Elsie Hintson' Elsie with an "s" .

You are right I should have caught that.

I like rebloom, but it's not a requirement for me. If they are strong growers and easy bloomers and have a relatively long period of bloom it would be enough for me. They can manage a long period of bloom by staggering the scapes coming up in a clump, by having lots of buds that successfully reach bloom or by having those scapes just blooming at slower intervals among the buds it has. I need them to make clumps, so the growth is a factor.

The plants really do go about doing it differently. I considered Lillian's Vapor Trail the best this year, but it didn't have the longest bloom period. There were three initial bloom scapes and three instant rebloom scapes that started blooming before the first ones finished. There should have been four scapes of each, but hail and insects got two scapes. That might have affected the length of bloom which began May 22 and ended June 26. Just over a month, but quite the show in between those dates. The next two were about equal in my rating, but did it differently. Serge Rigaud bloomed from May 27 through July 20. There were five scapes and another that hail took out. There were days when there was lots of bloom, days when there were only one or two and some days the scapes took a day or two of rest. The bloom period wasn't solid bloom. I frankly enjoyed those breaks because there were other plants blooming. The other really good show came from Primal Scream which only had five scapes that bloomed from May 31 through June 26. That was the shortest bloom period of the three, but it came as a daily blast without any breaks and was just spectacular while doing it. I think given another year or two, all of these will do better and yield longer bloom periods provided natural disasters don't interfere too much.

What would be nice for me is some later rebloom as opposed to instant rebloom. I think both the blooms and myself would appreciate the cooler temperatures from later rebloom. With the long growing season here, that should work. So far, all the rebloom stalks have shown up before the initial stalks have finished blooming, but I grew an old yellow one a few years ago and it had a distinct early bloom and later fall bloom with a couple of months separating them. Wish the deer hadn't found it.

sooby,
I did not check where the plant was hybridized, because no matter where it was hybridized (north or south) I would still need confirmation from someone who actually grows it to know if it is one of those plants that would rebloom down here...and not just rebloom, but have a appreciable rebloom.
I am thinking about adding 'Techny Peach Lace' (rebloom or not) just based on the image posted by Silldew over in the July Blooms thread.
That thing is over loaded with buds!
Does 'Techny Peach Lace' rebloom for anyone out there?

needrain,
I would think that instant rebloom is a rather modern thing and that the older plants would seldom if ever show it. On the other hand I would think the older ones that do have substantial rebloom would have a staggered bloom period and have up to three periods of rebloom. I seem to have the later type going on here, a bloom cycle then a rest and then new scapes. Orange Velvet is a perfect example: it bloomed early in the year and is just about ready to bloom again now. I must say there are some beautiful buds forming on it.

Techny Peach Lace has never rebloomed for me. I very rarely get rebloom on anything even if it says it reblooms. The exception is Indian Giver and my Not Happy Returns yellow one.

Making this list has really helped me zero in on what I can let go of! @bluegrassmom

I have always heard Orange Velvet was an outstanding rebloomer! Supposedly even up here in zone 5. I have never tried but who knows, maybe someday!

Salome Amasing Grace
Salome Custard Candy
Salome by low
Several other Salome names I'll look up as my memory of them is missing unless I see my map.
Aquire The Fire
Along the Way
Andrew Christis
Indian moccasin
Chipper cherry

Several spiders Hebrides by Linda Barnes of NC


My father sent me about 700 scapes that were sent to him without asking first if he wanted to trade Daylilies for his wife's hostas. He didn't. He sent them to me, on May 10 and then again two days later. The UPS man said nobody plants in North Carolina in May. I wanted to tell him my neighbor just planted grass but I was too busy opening the boxes and putting them in 10% solution of Clorox to a gallon of water as they had been in boxes for almost 2 weeks. The first one started blooming within two weeks. Saratoga Spring time
From then on every May 13 except for a one-year the first draught year it bloomed May 15 and the last boom was usually October 10 . I grew them for 13 years . Three of those years were drought all of the plants bummed but just shorter scapes. I planted them in a maze in the front yard and in full bloom the small children in the town came over with their parents and ran through the maze and the parents took pictures Our peak Blooms day was always June 27 through June 30 . The daylilies to care of themselves in the drought we did not water their little tiny fingerliens took over and then when they got water they just got fatter and pushed a taller stands and blooms . We donated 200o to our local AHS club . The man who owns Happy Moose Wondering wanted to do tetraploids and he wanted us as a club to buy several hundred dollar and $150 plants .The people who grew them would bring them back after three years and give them back to the club for auction and get two scapes. Ours was the most prolific But 700 turned to 6000 named Daylilies that grew in the front yard because they multiply in case anybody hasn't figured that out. Xeriscape with Daylilies! You could see the maze from Google Earth. The $150 one we agreed to grow did not look any better than the older versions of red scattered amongst $50-$4 daylilies. When we retired we decided to move to Texas same zone 8. We tried to sell our Daylilies, a judge came from another county and scooped entire clumps for $10 a clump and he chose the biggest clumps. My husband has been paralyzed since he was six and I became paralyzed while I was working so we both were in surgery in NC. Growing daylilies, Lilium (my and my father's favorite) plus bonsai were in our blood. I had not seen my father throughout my childhood (15 years) and when he saw my garden pictures he said, "whose garden is that?" I told him it was mine and he said you and I love Lilium. His mother grew peonies. My husband and I showed all three and won a few times. My husband was chosen as New Talent Contestant in bonsai national show in Texas. We decided to move to Texas because our son loved in Austin. Along comes the owner of Happy Moose Wandering man who says he successfully grows tetraploids now and very successful sells them. He dug our Daylilies all day long. When I went outside to see his digging I thought we were successfully selling him most of our daylilies. He complained how his wife divorced him and he doesn't have his children. She ran the AHS registry for several years. Then he let some doves out of cages. Walked up to us and said "your daylilies are old." We said "yes they are old but there's 6000 verying from $150-$4. His trailer was stuffed from all day digging clumps of our Daylilies. He then said "I'm not paying you anything." He got in his truck and backed his trailer out of our driveway and left. My husband and I don't believe in bringing theft to court. We sold the house and brought our favorite Daylilies he didn't take with us, but with 2 wheelchairs we only had room for 20 plus Lilium and bonsai.
We had a four year drought in Texas so are our daylilies, Lilium and bonsai almost dead but the hostas loved it this year, we've had more rain in town than any on record ever remember the garden was a lake for most of this year we now need to replace almost everything. Xeriscape again.

to the above post......

Beautiful Edgings
Indian Giver
Cherry Festival
Apron strings are some great older dls.

Strutters Ball-monster grower with strong scapes.
Matthew Martin- good grower and its brown and so different.
Mighty Chestnut-love the color and has rebloomed for me twice.
Magic Carpet Ride-another monster performer i plan on mass planting my 2 clumps lined out.
Night Beacon-what it lacks in size makes up for in its boldness of purple and yellow.
Laugh Out Loud-always signals the beginning of that time of year when my yard is filled with color.
Moonlit Masquerade
Awakening Dream
Christmas Ribbons
Hot Wire
Conspirators Oath
I love the monsters of the garden meaning strong scapes, high bud count,out of this world branching and doubling in clump size within 3 years. I am downright crazy about this plant only wish i had discovered its merits years sooner.