Background history:

'South Seas' is a dormant tetraploid introduced in 1993 by Moldovan.

It has earned the following AHS awards:
Honorable Mention: 1998

This plant can be found in the ATP Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'South Seas') .

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.



Also, please consider adding a "Local Report" to the ATP Plant Database! Thank you!

Daylily (Hemerocallis 'South Seas')

South Seas is an underappreciated cultivar, wonderful color and dependable performance in zone 6b. I love this plant and I will always grow it. Always beautiful in the garden and multiplies quickly.

I know summer is truly here when 'South Seas' shows her first blooms. Year after year, she brightens my garden with the most colorful, almost neon coral blooms. Dormant, stately, and just all around lovely.

Hey Jon,
I am a fan of Moldovan, and South Seas is a great example of the super hardy, great performing, beautiful daylilies he produced. South Seas has been in my garden for over ten years---and has never failed to provide me with good bloom despite increasing shade that has sent neighboring cv.'s into a slow tailspin. It has laughed at hard NC Winters, withstood intense summer heat, and was one of the first daylilies to be pretty resistant to water damage to the flowers. It seldom has thrip damage, and resist's rust. If all the pretty cv.'c coming out of FL could be this good---it would be a perfect world.
Checking it out on the AHS Database---South Seas as been a part of 33 registered crosses. It breeds Dormancy (a most valuable trait). 17 of the 30 cv.'s that have stats listed are Dormants---all the rest are SEV. It can go many directions in hybridizing: either Full-form---or, UFO. I have used it both ways---crossing it with Thelma Douglas for full form---or crossing one of it's progeny, Bombay Silk--to Genie In A Bottle. One of it's most endearing traits is it's ability to transmit color intensity and clarity: redder reds, glowing rose/pink, brighter eyes, etc. Even though it was registered in 1993, 29 of it's crosses were registered since 2000---with three this past year alone. I think it continues to have a bright future. Douglas's Sam The Man looks really great---and I may just invest in it. It has a very unusual ORANGE watermark on it that is very attractive.
Here are my pics of South Seas:

Thanks for the lengthy report, I gave you two acorns because of it.

SOUTH SEAS is a good one and is an outstanding parent for coral colors.

South Seas is an outstanding daylily! This one was planted here in 2007 the year I moved here and really made the leap into daylilies. I had place the order for it and a few others over winter and could not for them to arrive!

South Seas reaches close to the 30 inches here. So blooms are well above the foliage. It increased very quickly for me here in zone 5b. I have never divided it but really should consider doing so next year. My clump is very large. It sends up lots of scopes and bloom over a number of weeks. I don't recall a problem with thrips on this one. Foliage is very good too.

I have in right in the center of a long bed. There is no missing this one among the crowd. The color is another one that has a glow to it. It is very hard to describe and very hard to capture accurately on my camera. Calling it Coral just doesn't do it justice! The hues of pink/ coral/ orange are beautiful.

South Seas is not a fancy one but it really does deliver. Worth growing and keeping!

My small clump is only a few years old, but it has performed perfectly here. Good grower, sturdy and with great color - I agree with Claudia that it's hard to capture the color accurately in an image. I wasn't prepared for how luminous it would be in the garden, but I love that.

Here it is in a crowded bed with other daylilies, OT-lilies and some Miscanthus grasses. It's the tallest of the daylilies on the left and its height is also an aspect that I like.

I got SS because it glowed at the nursery. Love it. I love these day lilies that glow!

I bought a daylily three years ago labeled as Final Touch BUT when two cousins who have daylilies saw it in bloom, they told me that was probably South Seas and not Final Touch. It has bloomed every year and increased. Comparing bloom pictures, I believe I do have South Seas. One of those cousins just gave me South Seas so now I will compare and know I have South Seas.

Purchased South Seas in 2009 and have given away some, but I still have a nice clump left. Gave my mom a small 4-6 fan clump 2 years ago and it is a huge clump now. It really increases well and each bloom seems almost perfect. Very few, if any, blemished or misshapen blooms.

I like sturdy scapes and SS's scapes definitely hold up well. I also like the branching which is about 2-3 way and spaced well enough so that each bloom opens nicely. It blooms for about 3-4 weeks in my zone 6b garden usually from mid-June to early July.

Here's a nice picture taken on 6/25/14 showing branching and bud count. Bud count looks to be somewhere between 6-12, can't tell for sure. You can also see how the scapes stand above the foliage and that the foliage looks really good. I have not seen rust on SS.

South Seas was new my garden Sept 2014. It didn't perform well in 2015. Looking forward to 2016 and all the comments made so far come true.

Have had mine for years now and couldn't be happier. I was told that many of the Moldovan daylilies didn't perform all that well in high heat regions, but South Seas does just fine. As with most of my daylilies, it is container grown, and even in a container left outside to over winter it's survived just fine. I got mine because everyone, no matter what kind of fancy dancy grower they were, recommended it. I do too.........Maryl

I have been growing South Seas for 5 years. It is hardy, increases at a reasonable rate in that I have not had to divide it yet. It produces a goodly number of blooms and is a stand out performer in my garden. It produces seeds easily. I have had them drop and germinate beside the mother plant. A great daylily.
[lightbox]2015-11-19/Raven/

Something happened when I tried to load the picture and I can't find a delete button---so this is a goofy post with no picture!!

I fixed your image here it is:

That is a great picture of South Seas Mary Anne:) Love the butterfly weed around it

I bought mine from Growing Places quite a few years ago. I have given clumps to several people and shared some with the local daylily club for the sale. I saw a listing in a catalog calling it a designer daylily. The vivid color makes it one of my favorites and I have it growing in my front yard because it looks great with the orange stone on my house.

I've only had SS one year so I can't speak to how it increases yet but I think it's going to form a clump fairly quickly. I can say it's bloom is dramatic and clear with interesting color variations that cameras can't quite capture ( not in my hands anyway). No sign of rust. I recommend this one.

South Seas has been part of my SE Minnesota garden for the past 5+ years. It always puts on a great performance every summer even after our normally brutal winters.
When the sunlight hits the bloom it glows! Great plant, no insect or disease problems.