I have 84 different daylily cultivars in my garden, most represented by multiple clumps, and Royal Celebration is the only one that has not done well. When it formed flower buds, they started out as unusually small structures and then shrank into deformed shapes and dried up. Finally, the entire spike dried up. Photographs can be seen here:
I was very confused as to what was going on with my plants, so I asked the daylily experts at garden.org. I learned from their responses that there is a genetic defect in Royal Celebration that causes stunted buds. Several people who tried to grow it reported getting rid of it because of their experience with its stunted buds.
I wonder how Royal Celebration could have won an Honorable Mention award from the American Hemerocallis Society when it has these problems.
wonder how this affects those? I would be leery of spending money on it's offspring that they too could have performance issues.
Why would anyone use it in hybridizing?
