Background history:

'Neon Rainbow' is a semi-evergreen tetraploid introduced in 1995 by Enman Joiner.

Char created a thread about Enman Joiner:
The thread "ATP Series: The Daylilies of Enman R. Joiner, Sr." in Daylilies forum

More information can be found on the Joiner Daylily Gardens website:
http://www.joinerdaylilygarden...

Neon Rainbow is an early to mid-season bloomer with possible rebloom. It has earned the AHS Honorable Mention: 1998 award. It is pod and pollen fertile with 7 registered children: http://garden.org/plants/paren...

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

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 'Neon Rainbow')

NEON RAINBOW has always grew and bloomed well for me but has a blah faded out color here in zone 6

Neon Rainbow is one of my favorites for prettiness. However, I can't really comment on it as a hardy daylily as I have had it only since '13. It bloomed like this in '14 but the winter of 2014 devastated several of my daylilies and this was one. It didn't completely die so I have hopes it will rebound next year and prove to be a keeper.

This dl grows well for me, blooms well, very pretty color that is distinctive and I LOVE it! The petals have good substance also. It is photogenic for me and always does the dishes... wait! scrap that last bit, got carried away

'Neon Rainbow' is just an okay plant in my garden. While it has an attractive bloom, the plant does not grow well for me. Low bud count, unreliable bloom, quick to abort pods, and failure to thrive - it's not one I would recommend.

Judy I see that you are in zone 9 I wonder if the plant likes a cooler zone? It does good here for me, but I should add also that we have cool mornings alot. Would be interesting to see if other people growing it in the warmer zones have trouble with it.

Actually I am 9b, bordering on 10. 'Neon Rainbow' needing a cooler climate than here is very possible, but I usually don't have trouble with Joiner plants. I've lost a few (semi-evergreen) but I believe those still had too much dormancy. Some, especially the uf lines and some doubles, are star performers. In the case of 'Neon Rainbow', I am thinking the trouble is with the Munson influence. Years ago, I moved out what Munsons I had because they gave such poor performance in my garden.

What is the Munson influence? I recently acquired this cultivar and live in a similar zone as you, Judy.

Not a Munson, but Munson daylilies as a group. I used to have several daylilies hybridized by R. W. Munson and none did well for me. Bud counts were low, branching left much to be desired, and often the blooms were splotchy or didn't open well. I didn't understand why, as I believe they were hybridized in Florida, but they just didn't perform well for me.

Since 'Neon Rainbow' has 'Court Magician' (Munson-R.W., 1987) as a pollen parent, that could explain 'Neon Rainbow's poor performance here.

Whatever the reason, I have no patience with poorly-performing daylilies. They may be super-stars up north, or in the mid-south but they have to perform well in the 'waiting room of Hell', which is my climate.

I acquired 2 fans of Neon Rainbow in late August 2015 and it was transplanted into a new raised bed in early October 2015. It has not yet bloomed for me and this is a year later. The plant seems to have declined over the past year as the 2 fans are now quite small (they look smaller than some of my 6 month old seedlings), so I am concerned I might lose it. It gets plenty of water, fertilizer, and sunlight, so maybe it is the heat here in Central Florida. If it dies, I will just replace it with a different cultivar. I was sure hoping to get to see some blooms from it first though.