Up until this year 'Sears Tower' was one of my favorite daylilies. It earned some disfavor late this season when it developed some rust; not horribly so, but enough that I had to trim the foliage back and do a spray with 'Sentinel'. The rust may or may not be related to the fact that last fall I finally planted it into the ground (as opposed to the 1.5-2 gal pot where it had lived several years). The ground spot was the exact same location where the pot had lived all these years, and that area gets hit by irrigation spray, so my guess is that the spray got the foliage this year, whereas in previous years it did not.
What was interesting to me was that all the years that the plant was still in the pot, the scapes leaned so badly once flowering began that they needed support. Growing in the ground, this has not been the case - the scapes all stood up strong and proud. Some of them were quite high (no, I didn't measure, but I'd say easily over 4 ft), whereas others (on the shadier side of the clump?) were shorter. (I am hoping that next year, after the plant has settled in more, all of the scapes will have similar heights.)
Apart from that, the plant has large fragrant flowers that always open well here, nice looking foliage (before the rust
), and it provides welcome color to the garden when many (or most) daylilies have bloomed out (and/or are a month away from rebloom). Bud count is on the low side (10-15 per the registration data and that is what I get) and it does not rebloom, but with a large clump the show is adequate, especially for that part of the daylily season. The clump always reliably starts bloom here towards the end of June (overlapping a bit with the ending of 'Osterized', another desirable daylily), and ends the first week of August (this year it bloomed from 6-21 to 8-3), making it (in my opinion) a solid Mid Late bloomer (and hang the registration data).
'Sears Tower' is both pod and pollen fertile, however using it as a pod parent, I have never gotten anywhere near 25 seeds. (This has been true for all tets here, not just for 'Sears Tower'.) I have used it as a pod parent with pollen from only a few other daylilies; some years it has been relatively easy to set pods on, other years, not (this with pollen from the same parent). (This year I believe I got all of one pod from my clump.)
Being a dormant daylily, I am hoping that the rust will not rear its head on this plant again next year. If it does, 'Sears Tower' may have to go back into a pot (a larger pot this time, I promise) placed well away from any rusty daylilies.
