Background history:

'Fooled Me' is a dormant tetraploid introduced in 1990 by Reilly-Hein. No further info on hybridizer.

Fooled Me is an early to mid-season extended bloomer. It has a rust resistant rating of 2.3. It has earned the following AHS awards: Stout Silver Medal: 2005, Award of Merit: 2001, and Honorable Mention: 1998. It is pod and pollen fertile with currently 190 registered children: http://garden.org/plants/paren...

This plant can be found in the NGA Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Fooled Me') .

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 NGA Plant Database! Thank you!

Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Fooled Me')

I do own this plant. It is a fast grower and blooms very well in partial shade. Eventhough I plant it near a tree, root competition from the tree does not affect it at all. When the time comes, it will bloom its head off. Though it is a nice plant, I do prefer its offspring, Oktoberfest over Fooled Me. Oktoberfest has a nicer form and reblooms but Fooled Me does not rebloom for me.

Fooled Me grows very well in my garden and reaches the stats here. It is one of the first to bloom in my garden and the bloom time is extended. I am sorry I do not have a record of bud count. The blooms always look the same. Color never fades and the form is consistent. It does not rebloom.

I like Fooled Me for its vibrant and consistent colors. The greenery is thick and neat and holds up well in the heat.

I have now owned it for several years and it has established a nice clump. No reblooms for me either.

Fooled Me has increased very nicely, has a great bud count, and this year rebloomed. Mine is in full sun and performs great. It lives up to being a Stout Medal.

A nice increaser & blooms well with flowers that hold up to the heat well. It has rebloomed for me, but not every year. I highly recommend this one.

A cheerful presence in the garden, taller than the 24" stated in the DB but this is probably because I have it in a semi-shady spot. Blooms well for me (zone 8b) but has not so far rebloomed. I may take a division of it to France (zone 10a) to see if it will rebloom there.

I purchased "Fooled me" from a broker's catalog. It was shipped to me in the fall and Planted immediately in a location that received part morning sun and full afternoon shade.

The next spring the leaves came up but before it sent up a bloom scape I was moving to a new location so I dug it up and transplanted it to my new place in a location where it received 3 hours afternoon sun. It bloomed despite the transplant.

It has bloomed repeatedly even when other Daylilies around it that went through the same transplant location have not bloomed or became growth stunted.

'Fooled me' is brilliant and stands out in the garden from a distance. It is also a vigorous grower that seems to double in size every year. A sure favorite of mine.

This spring I transplanted it again into a very sunny location... I plan on posting more photos next year.

In looking through photos from the last four years, I've searched for ones that were slightly different from the the uniform, standard blossom. To my mind and eye, each of these has a slight difference, worth looking at, so I'd like to share them. Since there are already 51 photos in the Database, I haven't entered any of these.



In my new location of full sun all day long, I've noticed that sometimes Fooled Me shows signs of bleaching at the end of the day of relentless heat and sun. By about seven o'clock in the evening , here are some examples of what the intense sun does. Because of the substantial thickness of the petals, they don't disintegrate, but they do show fading.

Fooled Me bloomed from 6/15 to 7/21 this year for me and it is not a rebloomer, so when it is done, it's done. It does bloom its head off though! I have not noticed rust on it and it still looks good in the garden now, even though we've gone a month with only 1/2 inch of rain (just got 3/10ths this morning, woohoo!).

Stands up to heat well, but does fade by the end of the day.
7/2/16 around 11am:


7/21/16 around 6pm. Not as brilliant, but yet not as wilted, curled, and faded as some others I have.


While I haven't counted buds, I have a picture that shows the branching and buds.



I believe in my garden it actually gets taller than the registered 24" height, more like 28 or so. Some scapes only had skimpy two-way branching with 6-8 blooms, but others had nice three-way or more with at least 20 blooms. This picture has two scapes, the one on the right is probably one of the best scapes I had this year.





I didn't always like yellows and oranges, but this one is a keeper!

I've had FM since 2008. As I recall, it was small and not in good shape as I bought it at the end of the season, actually, it was poor looking. It is doing very well eight years later. While I have not divided it, I probably should soon.

FM is one of those bright, cherry blooms that catches your eye. I'm sure FM gets taller than the registered height.

Last year I did some pollenating with Fooled Me: (Hope to see the seedlings bloom in 2017, but more likely in 2018.)
Red Suspenders x Fooled Me
Fooled Me x Red Suspenders
A red-eyed seedling x Fooled Me
Dominic x Fooled Me

Picture of Fooled Me:

Here are some of the crosses (taken in 2018):

Do I dare criticize a Stout winner? I found Fooled Me to be dominating and weedy in growth. I do like hot colors, but just found it garish and uninteresting. I suppose the bottom line is that it was taking too much space in the garden.

Here in Zone 5 southern NH, Fooled Me does well. It's planted in part shade which doesn't seem to bother it. It doesn't have the robust, thick foliage I prefer, but the vibrant yellow color does light up the shaded area.

Fooled Me does exceptionally well here. I have only seen one rebloom scape in my garden. It had good bud output this year. I didn't do any counting on it this year. Three clumps reside here.

Although I no longer have "Fooled Me" I give it high praises for it color,outstanding bud count and it's quick to form a nice clump. I suggest planting tall red saliva all around it to make it really shine in your garden.

@LilySue that tip.

Once again I appear to have taken no notes on this plant this year. I assume from my lack of photos that it was not very impressive this year. I only have one photo of the plant foliage, and that was taken at a very early stage in March. Then I only have three photos of the bloom (all taken on the same day). So that tells me that his year it did not perform very well.

All I can say about this plant is that everyone wants a piece of it when they visit the garden. It certainly gets visitors' attention. It performs well and is unaffected by my winters (zone 5). It is well branched and bud count of about 20 per scape. It does grow like a weed.

David

I crossed Dominic x Fooled Me. Here are the first year blooms from 2017.