I love a beautiful bloom as much as anyone, but seeing a clump, just covered in blooms is also great. I am searching for some nice ones that cover both bases. What are your best performers this summer?

Here is one of my best, its bud count is listed at 31-35

Oh gosh, I think I will decline this year because all bud counts are way down. But, I think in a normal year Maxfield Parrish would be my highest bud count cv along with Mapping Pennsylvania, Gudrid, Galaxy Explosion and Brushed By Bluebirds.

Another one I added late is Riot on the Kindergarten Bus. Bud counts listed over 40! Wow! I cannot wait for this one to settle in!

Cindy, I think it must be down for a lot of areas. I agree I do have Gudrid and it is a powerhouse.

Every time I see Riot on the Kindergarten Bus, I'm a little bummed. That was the first registered daylily that I acquired that died before I even got to see it bloom. I don't know what killed it as it arrived beautiful and appeared to be healthy. Probably something I did. But it is one that still haunts me as I loved the name. I work with little people at a public school and the name of that cultivar made me laugh and laugh. I envisioned a riot taking place by some little people who hijack a school bus. I am sure they would riot to go to the community playground or pool instead of coming to school. (Though most of the students I've worked with over the years love coming to school.) The name made me want that cultivar. Someday, maybe I'll replace it and try again.

Becky, I'm sorry you lost yours Hopefully, mine will do better and bloom for me next year. I am not a huge fan of yellow but I LOVED the name too. I love children and my sister was a teacher

Most of my plants are way to young to have reached the max in bud count, so I will just list them with the registered bud count, which is what I hope to obtain: I have just recently ordered some new plants with high bud counts and higher branching numbers, but I will just list the ones currently in my garden.
'America's Most Wanted': 31-35 buds with 5 way branching.
'Bali Watercolor':31-35 buds with 7 way branching
'Blushing Octopus': 46 and over buds with 7 way branching
'Darla Anita':36-40 buds with 5 way branching
'Inner Destiny':36-40 buds with 6 way branching
'Magic Lake': 41-45 buds with 4 way branching
'Mandalay Bay Music':36-40 buds with 5 way branching
'Parisian Adventure':36-40 buds with 4 way branching
'So Many Stars': 36-40 buds with 4 way branching
'Space Coast Tiny Perfection': 41-45 buds with 5 way branching.

I just wonder about Becky losing her ROTKBus. I checked the data base and I see that it is a semi-evergreen and probably should have been okay for her area. However, I have three Davissons--semi evergreens that should do here--and they don't. Check the stats on them and they are very impressive, but I have never seen anything here that comes close and this is after four years. I can only wonder if our zone is too hot for them. Probably never know for sure, but these will be the only Davissons in our garden. I forgot to mention that she sent Part Time Princess as a bonus, just beautiful for a couple of years and dead after that. This is not an indictment of her plants, for I think they are wonderful when I see the pictures of them in other people's gardens, but for whatever reason, the ones we have do not thrive here in our garden.

I rarely really count buds, but I will name one. Black Fathom Depths did great here this year, and a bud count of 26-30 probably did happen this year. If I can remember more, I will post them.

Certainly in defense of the Davison plants, she does state that most of her plants need a good winter chill to succeed.
I think it might have been in a reply to Becky that she said there would be very few of her plants that would do well in such a warm zone.

We had a weird season, very dry, and lots of low bud counts. In spite of that, these were the top performers:

'Almost All Green' - 3 way, 20 buds, rebloomed


'Say Hello to Hans' - 4-5 way, 15-20 buds


'Amazing Morris Kirby' - 4 way, 25 buds, reblooming now


'Dixieland Five' - 5-6 way, 20-25 buds


'Pea Green with Envy' - Bud builder, 2 way, 15-25 buds, prolifs


'Shining Mission' - 3 way, 15-20 buds, rebloomed, prolifs


Looking forward to seeing what's doing well for others. I just realized, all these plants were hybridized in Georgia. Perhaps that's why they are among the best performers in my garden. They feel right at home!

I think you are right about the plants being right at home, I think there is a lot to be said for buying plants that were developed in or near your own garden area.

Seedfork said:I think you are right about the plants being right at home, I think there is a lot to be said for buying plants that were developed in or near your own garden area.

That would probably never be an option for folks from areas like mine. It's not gardening friendly country at the best of times. Actually, the plants that have outperformed everything else here this season came from New York. Cultivars from Linda Michaels and Lori Jones were outstanding in their second year hear. Lots of increase and lots of bloom. They may change their mind about that after another year. Who could blame them? It's just awful right now here in my spot.

Donlad you might be right (let's hope not) those plants might have done well this year but may not last many years. Maybe you could hybridize a few of your own plants that would excel in that part of the country.

Seedfork said:Donlad you might be right (let's hope not) those plants might have done well this year but may not last many years. Maybe you could hybridize a few of your own plants that would excel in that part of the country.

Too old. No room. No way to protect from deer when they figure out I'm growing them again. I'm not convinced origins where they are hybridized will make that much difference in many cases. Some where the lineage goes way back where the ancestors all originate in the same place - maybe. Or maybe on others where an ancestral species is heavily involved and it came from similar climate. At this point in a cultivated daylily, I'd think the gene pool has been thoroughly mixed up, so even siblings from a cross might react differently in a climate. When you look at the favorites in a region, there are some that cut a pretty wide swath across several zones and variable growing conditions. I'd think it more likely to be what genes any specific plant ended up inheriting rather than where the hybridizing takes place. Obviously, growing things in a location may be weeding out things that don't perform. I'd think that might be very local, though, and probably dependent on weather patterns which can be a long term proposition sometimes. I'm not sure a seedling selected during a long period of drought in zone 7 would like and perform the same when the weather pattern switched to something else for a few years in the same location. It might be more applicable to diploids than tetraploids. Tets are just by their very nature going to have an extremely varied and mixed up set of genetics at play. That's just my thinking on it.

Donald, were any of the plants you grow hybridized anywhere close to you, with similar conditions?

I don't think so Larry. I'm more in a west Texas situation where I'm located, as opposed to an east Texas location where Dave the man is located. I only have to travel a few miles east to see the difference visually. On the other hand I only have to travel about 25 miles west until I run out of landscapes that grow trees. At the rate they've been dying in my area, I'm afraid the edge of that tree growing line is receding eastward. That is dictated by rainfall, I think. To grow a lot of daylilies successfully here would require a source for a lot of supplemental water. Big hybridizers tend to grow seedlings in large quantities, so the lack of natural rainfall and expense of growing daylilies in those quantities means they would likely locate somewhere else. Then there is the wind. It's also not a friend to daylilies and it's nearly always present here. I can go east and south and leave the wind behind, but it only gets worse going west or north. Some of those coming from Oklahoma might come from areas more similar, but the winters would be colder and, again eastern Oklahoma is much different than central or western Oklahoma. Maybe the harsh growing conditions are the reason, but as a general rule, there is limited interest in gardening in my area. Vegetable gardening some. There used to be quite a few fruit orchards, but no longer. Too frustrating, I think.

I want to thank everyone for you input. I just returned from a trip out West and I would think that the drought would have an effect on the plants. They must be stressed!

I am glad to see the Pea Green with Envy listed. I was gifted with that plant this summer

Surprised to see 'Pea Green' shown in this list as a bud builder, the registration does not show it. But I also have a few that are bud builders and are not registered as such.

"Bud-building" is not required data asked for on the AHS registration form. Unless this piece of information is noted in the color description area, which has limited space, there would be no place to mark it as such.

I should not have used the word registration, I was looking in the NGA database, and assumed wrongly that bud -building was imported from the AHS with the other data, sometimes it may be I suppose, but I think it was something that was added to the database by a member. I guess we should all do that for bud-builders we find in our gardens.

I have rarely seen bud high counts on my daylilies (as high as the registration data indicates), regardless of grown in a pot with planting mix or grown in the ground. Perhaps it is the water situation, perhaps it is a bit too much shade, though I am sure our latitude also plays a part. At any rate, if I have a large flowered daylily with at least 12 flowers per scape, I count that as good. ("Large" does not just mean UFs.)

The best performers (among the registered daylilies) bud count wise this summer have been 'Four Eyes' and what may (or may not) be 'Black Falcon Ritual'. (The latter might be a seedling of BFR.) Both well exceeded 12 buds, and 'Four Eyes' is reblooming. Interestingly enough, 'Steller's Jay' (another Lambertson) also has good bud count and branching here (but alas, the flowers rarely open well - they seem to need warm nights).



I also have a couple of red tet seedlings (both out of 'Bamboo Spitfire' but by different parents) with 5.5" blooms which run about 20 buds, but sadly, they don't rebloom. (I blame the shade, here. 'Bamboo Spitfire' was a reliable rebloomer at our old house, but never here.) I like them well enough, though (especially the first one) that I let them stay.



As many have said (and Richard Norris, iirc, addressed this in an essay of his on hybridizing), you have to ignore the registered data and observe what performs well in your garden.